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CICERO'S 

FIVE BOOKS 

DE FINIBUS; 

OR, 

CONCERNING THE LAST OBJECT 

OF 

DESIRE AND AVERSION. 



BY S. PARKER 



REVISED AND COMPARED WITH THE ORIGINAL, 
1^ n WITH A RECOMMENDATORY PREFACE, 

BY JEREMY COLLIER, M. A. 

A NEW EDITION. 



r *% 



OXFORD 



PRINTED FOR N. BLISS ; 

AND J. TAYLOR & J. A. HESSEY, FLEET STREET, 

LONDON. 



1812. 



TO 



MR. CHERRY, 

OF SHOTTESBROOK, 



IN BERKS. 



Sir, 

The design of dedications has been so 
long abused, that modesty obliges me not to 
make you a tender of my respects in this 
way, much more than yourself not to admit 
of it. And yet if I ^should spare you, I 
could not excuse it to myself, when I consi- 
der your title to the present argument, and 
how good a judge you are both of that and 
the Translation. 

I have concerned myself with the greatest 
orator, and one of the greatest philosophers 
that ever appeared. And therefore decency 
forbids my name at length in the title page. 
But at the same time the world will be so 
just, I hope, to the translator, as to compute 
upon the sense he has of your favours, in 
proportion to the eminence of your author's 
character. 

Cicero, as appears by his dedicating so 
great a part of his works to Brutus, found 



iv DEDICATION. 

few of his fellow-citizens that deserved his 
address. Had he lived in our days, whatever 
some people imagine, he must have been 
more at a loss for men of merit. And you 
may be sensible that I flatter you as little as 
I wrong the rest of my countrymen, when 
I tell you there are not verj r many among 
them, worthy of Cicero's philosophy, and 
none worthier than yourself. 

And that } r ou may live long as admired 
an example, as you have always lived, of 
religion, piety, goodness, candour, and pru- 
dence, happy in yourself and yours, happy 
in the success of your designs and affairs, 
happy in the exercise and use of your learn- 
ing* happy in the neighbourhood and conver- 
mtion of Mr. Dodwell, (one of the greatest 
felicities I can wish you in this world) happy 
in the acquisition and enjoyment of what- 
ever as a good Christian -and a wise man you 
have reason to think valuable here, until 
you attain the completion of human happi- 
ness in a better state, is the prayer of, 

Honoured Sir, 

Your most obliged, 

And humble Servant, 

S. P. 



MR. COLLIER'S PREFACE 

TO THE 

READER. 



The following treatise, for the import- 
ance of it, may well be called the grand 
question. The inquiry is concerning the seat 
of the sovereign good, the complement of 
human happiness, and the farthest object of 
desire. And here all considerable parties 
are allowed to put in their claim ; to argue 
their pretences at length, and make the 
most of their cause. In the first place 
Torquatus stands up for Epicurus, and 
harrangues it strongly in behalf of pleasure : 
and by concealing the defects, and height- 
ening the advantages of this system, makes 
the argument entertaining enough. But 
then Tully appearing in person on the other 
side, pulls off Torquatus's paint, exposes the 
fallacy of his reasoning, and the scandal of 
his hypothesis ; and in short, makes a perfect 
conquest of Epicurus and all his clan : and 
this is the subject of the two first books. In 
the third the famous Cato Uticensis comes 
on in defence of the stoics; calls virtue 
and happiness the same thing, and courts 
nothing but what is strictly honourable and 
just : and thus by the lustre of his object, 
by begging a principle or two, arguing con- 



Tl MR. COLLIERS PREFACE. 

sistently, and nourishing handsomely upon 
the character of his wise-man, he makes his 
philosophy look plausible, solemn, and great. 
In the fourth book, Tully enters the lists 
again against Cato, takes his plea in pieces, 
proves the stoical provision for happiness 
too narrow, shews the vanity and canting of 
that sect, and that though their terms were 
different, their principles were much the 
same with those of the peripatetics, whose 
moral scheme in the fifth book is explained 
at large, and defended by Piso. This ar- 
gument we see must have a great deal of 
learning and curiosity in it ; insomuch that 
the matter and notional part would be suffi- 
cient to recommend it, though under an 
ordinary management : how then must it 
shine in the hands of so great a master as 
Tully? So rich in his invention, so exact 
in his method, so close in his reasoning, and 
so pompous in his elocution ? As for the 
translation, I have the satisfaction to com- 
pare it with the original ; and am of opinion 
the critics will find the authors sense well 
represented, which in so nice and uncom- 
mon a subject, is no easy performance : 
besides, the phraseology is English, and the 
turn lively and agreeable : and in some 
places I shall venture to say, Tully is im- 
proved by transplanting, and thrives better 
in our soil, than in his own. 



J. COLLIER. 



THE 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 



It is not the formality of the thing which 
draws a preamble from me, but 1 would 
gladly give my reader some necessary hints, 
and obviate a brace of prejudices, the one 
against translations in general, the other 
against translations of those authors which 
are called inimitable. 

To expostulate upon the former; What is 
the meaning of ignorance and conceit edness, 
unless it be, to understand nothing of other 
peoples knowledge, and prefer one's own 
before it ? Our unhappy nation has more 
reason than any other to distrust itself; and, 
since it will never be the better for its own, 
to try the cheaper experience of former ages 
and foreign countries. Besides ; to make 
good sense inclosure is a contempt of Provu 
dence which has designed it of more general 
benefit than the sun, and as communicable 
through the distances of time as place. For 
though it is inconsistent with the order of 
nature, an universal equality of privileges 



viii the translator's preface. 

and conditions ; yet empty heads are to be 
furnished from full ones, and not only au- 
thorized but obliged to supply themselves 
as they can. If some people have thought 
more to the purpose than we ; why do not 
we allow the advantage, and convert it to our 
own, as readily as the juice of French grapes, 
or the manufacture of Indian artificers ? 

It is objected that translations make us 
idle, and forgetful of the originals. Rather 
they should seem to put us in mind of them : 
and this is the least good they can do. I 
confess they may be trifled with, and so 
may the originals, and a great manj^ valuable 
things beside, and that is, by those who will 
not give themselves the trouble of making 
a right use of them ; for they are serviceable 
to those that understand the originals, by 
illustrating the sense, and to those that do 
not, by imparting it ; while the latter have 
the pleasure of novelty, and the former, of 
variety into the bargain. 

Another stratagem is, either to alarm our 
modesty or dispute our prudence ; if the 
original is good for something, it was arro- 
gance to render it; if good for nothing, we 
made a foolish choice. Here is a dilemma ! 
in obedience to which, no doubt, we are to 
let the illiterate part of the world lie unin- 
formed and destitute of those instructions, 
which were intended them by the learned ! 
What if we cannot reach the grandeur, 
eloquence, neatness, and I know not what 



THE TRANSLATORS PREFACE. IX 

all, of an author's expression? Must we 
lose his morality? Shall we stifle the seri- 
ous principles and solitary precepts of a 
Greek or Latin philosopher, in a compli- 
ment to the singular graces of his style, and 
very often to the fancied ones? Reason is 
not given for the sake of language, but 
{anguage for the sake of reason ; and it is 
rightly observed by men of sense, that our 
having a relish, as it is called, that is in plain 
English, a greater regard to words than 
things, may come in among the causes of 
all our public indiscretions and irregula- 
rities. 

1 am sensible Cicero in the title-page is 
enough, with some people, to prevent the 
good impressions of his own discourses. But 
no matter, he will take effect, in his disha- 
bille, upon the understandings of those that 
deserve to be the better for him. For here 
they will have his argument laid out in the 
same equal distribution and method as 
Brutus himself received it, thou oh not in 
the same propriety and easiness of language, 
which the matter will admit of as little as 
the author. If I have made those terms 
intelligible in English, which it cost him so 
much pains to find Latin for, let the reader 
be content. Tully derived most of his 
philosophical notions from the Greeks, whose 
thoughts were so refined and uncommon 
sometimes, that as rich as was their language, 
they were obliged to explain themselves in 

b 



X THE TRANSLATORS PREFACE. 

words provided on purpose. Now Tully 
endeavoured to cany up these notions, and 
set them out with a greater variety of ex- 
pression ; so that if our tongue can be made 
to keep pace with him. it is not a little for 
its credit. 

As to the argument of the following trea- 
tise ; it is, as the author takes occasion more 
than once to observe, the main question and 
most material point that immediately con- 
cerns us in philosophy, the origin as well as 
consummation of it. For men are as little 
inclinable to act, unless for an end, as to 
desist till they compass it ; and therefore 
if they mistake the worse for the better, it 
is a desperate case. Tully has handled the 
inquiry at large : in the first and third book 
he reports the resolutions of the epicureans 
and stoics in their full force and validity, 
out of the mouths of two very remarkable 
and popular champions, each for his cause. 
Iii the second he confutes, and, as became 
him, lashes the pretensions of the first ; and 
in the fourth discovers and rectifies the 
errors of stoicism, but with all the deference 
due to so generous over-sights. J n the fifth, 
Pi so presents his chart of the peripateticat 
principles, according to the best intention 
and tenor of them. And from first to last 
my author's ingenuity is as observable for 
the constructions he puts upon the sense of 
his adversaries, as his reach of judgment in 
the detection of their absurdities. His way 



THE TttAXSLATORS PRh- XI 

of disproving is fair, genteel, entertaining, 
and politic ; he first makes one ei on- 

quer another for him, and ti.en subdues 
them both tor himself inched 

the controversy, but wrought it up with 
many incidental observations, redexious, and 
authorities. He besprinkles it with/ 
citations from the be-t wits, and surprising 
instances of virtue and wisdom, domes 
and foreign. In a word, so comprehensive 
has he formed his that, beside the 

several opinions of ail the ol : j, as 

hose writings are p 1 as 

. about moral en rds a satis* 

:nc;ent, natu- 
. and moral phi! ;; with 

a faithful account of them, and a hand- 
le judgment upon them too. 

is while essed, that 

sometimes he strikes upon a prejudice or an 
s when, for example in the second 
of doubting comes upon him, and 
he dan r this or that in relation to 

the moral ends there mentioned. In the 
same book he speaks fair of the violences of 
Lneretia and L. Vi does Piso 

unreproved in the fifth, though he discoun- 
ter practice of self-murder a little 
before. re is a pa - :. the fourth 
book i rion of the soul's 
but then e fifth, where 
'Pis rts the perpetuity of its operation, 

ards questioning 



Xll THE TRANSLATORS PREFACE. 

or objecting against it, allows it, and declares 
"vigorously for the probability of it, in the 
first book of his T usculan Questions and Sci- 
pio's dream. Elsewhere Piso ventures too 
far, and Cicero takes no notice of it. No 
man, says he, could mistake his chief good, nor 
consequently his own measures, did he but un- 
derstand the full significancy of his nature 
as soon as he was born. If these two great 
men had lived long enough to be acquainted 
with St. Paul's doctrine, that we are not 
sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of 
ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, and 
the reasons he gives for it, they had altered 
their opinion. These are some of the most 
exceptionable positions : I should have men- 
tioned one more which leads up the rear, 
but that the reader will find considered at 
length in the Appendix. 

To make some amends for these illusions^ 
his allowed sentences are all weighty, con- 
sequential, clear, and apposite. He is a 
stranger to the windings of Plato, the intri- 
cacies of Aristotle, and the hastiness of Se- 
neca. He has Epictetus's morals, not. with- 
out the rationale. And had he not been by 
birth a republican, was qualified by nature 
to have argued as majestically and compen- 
diously as Antonine himself. However in 
one respect no author has been more un- 
happy than Cicero, that the excellence of 
his performances has baulked the use of 
them, and begot such a superstitious reve- 



THE TRANSLATORS PREFACE. Xlll 

rence in those that mioht have been his in- 
terpreters, as to hinder the distribution of 
that influence which he designed universal. 
I know some parts of his philosophy have 
within these few years appeared in English. 
An attempt, as it happens, an unkind one, 
has been made upon his Tusculan Questions, 
and his books of the Nature of the Deities. 
The British Cicero alone has copied the Ro- 
man to the life, in his admirable and envied 
translation of the Offices. J t is true, these 
three, with that which follows, are the sub- 
stance of his ethics ; but what other profit- 
able precepts and suggestions are to be col- 
lected from the remainder, 1 believe, might 
do some service anion o; us recommended in 
our own tongue, especially in an age when 
people rave after experiments, and, like the 
generality of madmen, will not be brought 
to their wits but in their own way ; when the 
obligations of Christianity are disowned as 
well as violated ; and that which should 
make them serious, is the subject of their 
mirth. Nor can we wonder that they who 
have lost religion, have lost themselves. 



CICERO 



OF 



MORAL ENDS. 



BOOK I. 



When I first attempted to naturalize the notions 
and arguments, which the Grecian philosophers 
have, with such a force of wit and judgment, and 
such an exuberancy of curious learning, delivered 
in their mother-tongue, I easily foresaw, my friend 
Brutus, that in spite of fate, and my best endea- 
vours, I should bring the critics about my ears in 
a plentiful manner : one sort of men (there are 
scholars of the party too) cannot digest so much 
as the business of philosophy in general; while ^£ 
others are willing to dispense with you for a little^pr 
smattering ; but for a constant and entire applica- 
tion to it, they can upon no terms approve of it. 
A third party are our helknized countrymen, 
topful of Greek, and too learned for the pedantry 
of Latin; and these know not how to excuse it 
to their own consciences, if they look into any but 



S CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

Greek authors. Others, of a fourth kind, I expect 
to meet with, directing me to the pursuit of more 
significant studies: they grant philosophical exer- 
cises are very polite and genteel, but then they 
do not suit the dignity of my character and condi- 
tion. To each of these I shall return a satisfactory 
answer : and first, as for the professed enemies 
of all philosophy, I refer them to a certain book 
of mine, (they know which I mean,) where upon 
occasion of Hortensius's invectives, I have drawn 
up its defence, and vindicated its merit ; a work, 
which yourself, and some other discerning persons, 
have been pleased to favour with such encourag- 
ing commendations, that I cannot forbear entering 
upon new essays, and should be sorry, if after I 
have once carried my point as to men's opinions, 
the world should have cause to believe it is more 
than I can do to keep it. As for the second sort, 
who condescend to gratify us with a small allow- 
ance, it is an impracticable lesson they teach us, 
when they talk of our abridging ourselves in the 
use of that which when we once come to meddle 
with, we loose the command of our own inclina- 
tions ; and in earnest I had rather shake hands 
with your thorough-paced abjurem of philosophy, 
than your people that would cramp us in a study 
which is almost infinite in its nature, and pretend 
to warn us against excesses, where temperance 
were a fault. For either a finished wisdom is at- 
tainable ; and then it is pity but, when we have 



EOOK THE FIRST. $ 

made prize of it, we should have time to enjoy the 
fruits of our expedition; or the difficulty is seem- 
ingly as great as if it were not so; but then, first 
of all, the search of truth ought to stop no where 
till there is no more to find ; and secondly, it were 
an eternal blemish upon us to flag in the chace 
when the game is inestimable. Again; is there a real 
satisfaction in writing upon philosophical argu- 
ments? Then certainly, nothing but envy and 
peevishness will interrupt us. Or is it a very la- 
borious toil ? It is hard, indeed, if a man may not 
have the liberty of being as industrious as he 
pleases. Old Chremes in the play, perhaps, 
thought it was good nature, when it disturbed him 
so much, that his new neighbour should dig and 
plough , and gaul his shoulders — not that he would 
balk his bustling, but only wished him to work 
upon matter more suitable to his quality: and just 
as obliging are those solicitous gentlemen, whose 
bowels yearn over us for that intention of thought 
which is properly a recreation to the thinkers. But 
it is not so easy to give our whole-sale Greeks con* 
tent ; as surprising an absurdity as, I conceive, it 
is, that they will not reconcile themselves to serious 
points discussed in the language of their own 
country, and yet find themselves entertainment in 
the verbal translations of the Greek mythologies. 
For where is the man so inveterately bent against 
the credit of his country, as to undervalue and 
throw aside Ennius's Medea, or Pacuvius's An- 



4 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

tiopa? To admire them as they stand in Euripidei, 
and nauseate them as made ours ? And yet the 
cry runs, Menander in the original for my money ; 
Caecilius's Synephebi, and Terence's Andria are 
trash to it. It may be so, but still, as good an 
author as we have of Sophocles, I had rather read 
Attilius's bakl translation of Sophocles's Electra 
than the original itself. And though Licinius in- 
deed would make Attilius a rough and a crabbed 
author, perhaps not without reason, yet he may 
and ought 'to be read ; and not only Attilius, but 
all the rest of our poets, the neglect of them pro- 
ceeding either from a lethargic laziness, or a fop 
pish delicacy. Besides, (or I am mistaken,) he 
scarce deserves the name of a learned man that is 
not competently versed in the productions of the 
Latins. Now with tags of metre translated from 
the Greek, such as uiiviam ne in nemore, &;c. we 
can dispense well enough ; where is the harm then, 
should we render what Plato has discoursed upon 
the subject of a good and happy life into Latin? 
Or, waving the project of a translation, what if I 
engage to make good what such authors of charac- 
ter have asserted, and annex my own opinion of 
things in my own method and style? Will there 
yet remain room for prejudice in favour of the 
Greeks, provided we write as handsomely as the 
best of them, without being beholden to any of 
them? It will not suffice to tell us, the Greeks 
have been canvassing all these questions before- 



BOOK THE FIRST. 5 

hand. By the same argument the objectors are 
debarred their poring upon half of the Greeks 
themselves that are extant. What has Chrysippus 
omitted that concerns the doctrine of the Stoics? 
and yet nothing will serve but we must read Dio- 
genes, Antipater, Mnesarchus, Panaetius, my friend 
Posidonius, (that should have been mentioned in 
the first place,) and an hundred besides. Do we 
not conceive a mighty satisfaction when we peruse 
Theophrastus upon the very same heads which 
Aristotle had treated of before him ? And so for 
the Epicureans; do they ever scruple to come 
over again with the same suggestions that Epicurus 
and their predecessors had set a foot formerly ? 
Well then, if the Greeks think it worth their while 
to read one another, though many proceed upon 
the same matter, because they handle it different 
ways ; it is a very hard case, if our people will not 
do the same justice to the labours of their country- 
men. I confess, were I resolved upon as formal a 
translation of Plato* and Aristotle, as our poets 
have made of the Grecian fables, I should be far 
from deserving the thanks of my fellow-citizens 
for the importation of those mighty genii; but I 
have not yet made the attempt, though 1 know of 
no impediment or prohibition to stop me ; and 
when it comes in my way, I shall use my own dis- 
cretion in citing passages, especially from the au- 
thors aforesaid, as Ennius has quoted from Homer, 
and Afranius from Menander. At the same time 



6 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

I will not do as Lucilius did, challenge and em- 
pamiel my readers. No, I will wish for a Persius, 
and call out for a Scipio and a Rutilius, whose 
depth of judgment was such a bug-bear, it seems, 
to the poet, that upon the apprehension he presently 
addresses himself to the Tarentines, Consentines, 
and Sicilians. This was one of that bard's many 
merry conceits, and in the days when critics had 
as little of politeness and learning in them, as his 
works, of solidity ; for, it is certain, they discover 
more of humour and the gentleman than scholarship. 
But as to my own concern, I need not stand in awe of 
any reader whatsoever, having presumed to dedi^ 
cate these notes to a person, who so fairly makes 
his party good, upon the comparison, with the 
best of the Grecian sages ; though it was yourself 
that laid an obligation upon me to do so, by the 
present you were pleased to make me of your book 
about Virtue, That which has begot so strange an 
abhorrency in some people to the compositions of 
the Latins, is, I believe, the misfortune of meeting 
with uncouth translations from wretched Greek 
originals, deliciously improved in the brewing. Nor 
will I blame those that have had no better lucta 
for their antipathy, upon condition they will cashier 
the Greeks too that harangue them to the same 
effect in the same strain. But who would refuse 
any valuable hints, whatsoever, or whencesoever, 
dressed up in expressions elegant and proper? Cer- 
tainly no body, unless it were the same person V 



BOOK THE FIRST. 7 

ambition to be thought a native of Greece, as Al- 
bucius had his mock-title, the Athenian praetor, 
given him by Scasvola. Our Lucilius's account of 
it is very comical and satyrical in those lines which 
he puts into Scaevola's mouth, Gr cecum te, Alhucu 

'Tis well, Albucius, you shall be no more 
A Roman, as we counted you before ; 
No, nor the Sabine, who so loudly boasts 
Of patrons, pensions, honourable posts. 
Whcn'er we meet, my brave Athenian lord 
I kiss your hand, and ^ar^be the word. 
Your troopers, lictors, all the tribe of state, 
"With x a ~? s sua ^ alarm the people's hate. 

The reflections were just: nor is any thing more, 
unaccountable than this prevailing aversion to our 
own manufacture. But that the disquisition is for 
another place, I am sensible I could prove, and 
have often insisted upon it, that the Latin tongue 
is so far from the barrenness which it is generally- 
charged with, as to be more copious even than the 
Greek. When or where have any of our first or 
second-rate orators or poets betrayed any defici- 
ency, either as to richness or elegance of expression, 
when once provided with a pattern to follow? 
The commonwealth of Rome has thought me wor- 
thy to be made an instrument of serving her inter- 
est ; and, I hope, what with the fatigues of the 
bar, and a thousand drudgeries and dangers, I 
have in that respect acquitted myself as I ought ; 



8 CICERO OF MORA*, ENt>S.. 

yet one duty more is, I think, incumbent uport 
me, and that is the propagation of learning among 
my countrymen, whatever pains or perplexities it 
may cost me. Furthermore, I promise all such as 
are disposed rather to read the Greeks, they shall 
never be discouraged by me, if they will really 
study them, and put no tricks upon us; and as for 
those who trade in both languages, or are inclin- 
able to prefer their own to any other so far as it 
will serve their purpose, I will do them what ser- 
vice I can. To proceed, they who would have 
me lay out my talent another way, are somewhat 
severe, seeing no body of Roman extraction has 
wrote more than I have done already ; not that I 
am yet without a reserve, if I live long enough to 
make it public, though among all my productions 
there are none preferable to the ensuing Philoso- 
phical Treatise, as every one that well digests it 
will allow. For how can we better exercise our 
thoughts and our curiosity than upon philosophi- 
cal Queres, and particularly the present; namely, 
What is ultimately the scope and end to which all 
our resolutions of living honestly and virtuously are 
pointed : what nature bids us pursue as the choicest 
of eligible things, and what to avoid as the greatest 
of evils : a question about which there has ever 
depended a mighty controversy among the men of 
letters ; and therefore, I conceive, I shall not seem 
to depart from the dignity of my character, by set- 
ting myself to learn wherein consists the solidity 



BOOK THE FIRST, 9 

and perfection of whatever occurs in the concerns 
of life. Shall two such patriots as Publius Scasvola 
and Marcus Manilius maintain a dispute whether 
a master's title be good to the child of his slave ? 
And shall Marcus Brutus dislike an argument of 
such an admirable kind and so general a use as 
mine ? I have heretofore with pleasure gone 
through that case beside many others of the same 
stamp, and design to go over them again; but 
must we therefore never look after those resolves 
which settle the main and only business of life ? 
The first, perhaps, may sell best ; but the last, I 
am sure, will serve best ; as I need not inform those 
who will but apply themselves to read them. Let 
me add, that I have dissected and sifted the whole 
question about the ends of good and evil, for I 
have not only dwelt upon such notions as I myself 
could approve, but stated the several hypotheses 
which philosophers of all sorts have advanced. 
To begin with the plainest, let Epicurus's model, 
being the most generally known, lead the van ; and 
you will see my account of it is as accurate as you 
can meet with any where among the Epicureans 
themselves, it being not my design to make prose- 
lytes, but to clear up truth. Once upon a time, 
you must know, I heard Epicurus's cause pleaded 
as to his opinion about pleasure, by that complete 
scholar Lucius Torquatus. Caius Triarius, a well 
instructed, serious young gentleman was present. 
And I answered what we had from Tprquatws. 

c 



10 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

They were pleased to make me a visit at my seat 
in the country ; and so after a short conference 
about learned matters, to which my two guests 
were much addicted ; once in our lives, says Tor- 
quatus, we have caught you at leisure ; now then I 
must know your reason why you refuse your vote 
for my friend Epicurus, for you are not so bad as 
the rest, that not satisfied with dissenting from him, 
bear him a mortal hatred. I take him to be the 
only man of them all that had truth before his eyes, 
and was able to rescue the mind from the grossest 
errors, and find out a complete method to make 
us good and happy. But I suppose yours and 
Triarius's objection is one and the same, that he 
wants all the elegancies of Plato, Aristotle, and 
Theophrastus. For as to the truth and stanchness 
of his assertions I cannot suppose you will pretend 
to dispute it. Never, Torquatus, replied I, were 
you wider of the mark. I am not at all displeased 
with the style of your philosopher; it is expressive 
and clear: and though I would not turn my back 
upon a philosopher's eloquence if it came in my 
way ; yet at the same time I would never fall out 
with him for having none to shew. No, it is his 
matter which I cannot relish, at least as to a great 
many instances that might be produced. But so 
many men so many minds, and none infallible. 
To this Torquatus : and what, I beseech you, may 
be your exceptions ? for I am well satisfied of 
your candour, and therefore conclude you have 



BOOK THE FIRST. 11 

some way or other mistook the philosopher's mean- 
ing. If I have, said I, my instructors Phasdrus 
and Zeno must answer for it, who with all the 
knowledge they communicated of the Epicurean 
principles, could never reconcile me to any hut the 
proofs they gave of their own diligence. Atticus 
and I were two of their most constant auditors ; 
for Atticus had an esteem for them both, and was 
a passionate admirer of Phosdrus ; nor did we let 
a day pass without interchanging our notions upon 
what had been dictated by our tutors. Then it 
never used to be any part of our debate whether I 
understood, but only which way I held the question. 
If you please, answered Torquatus, let us hear 
what it is that you cannot digest. In the first 
place said I, as much as he values himself upon 
his natural philosophy, never any man's abounded 
more with blunders and absurdities. He attempts 
improving upon Democritus, but in my opi- 
nion so very unfortunately, that whatever he 
mends he makes ten times worse than it was be- 
fore. Democritus had supposed an infinite space, 
uncircumscribed by dimensions or extremities, 
and therein a multitude of atoms or indivisible 
bodies, and these to frisk about hither and thither 
till they danced themselves into a consistency and 
continuity, so as to make up the material world ; 
and that these atoms derived not their agitation 
from the impulse of any efficient cause, but that 
they had been in motion from all eternity. Now 



12 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

so long as Epicurus keeps touch with Democritus, 
for the most part he makes a pretty good shift, 
though both advance a great many suppositions to 
which I can never subscribe, as particularly and 
especially, when there are two fundamental prin- 
ciples at least which every naturalist is obliged to 
consider, the efficient and the material cause, they 
have excluded the former, and wholly concerned 
themselves with the latter. In this nonsense they 
are equally interested ; but the next monster of 
imagination is Epicurus's own; for when he has 
given the word of command to his little indivisible 
solids, that they should all descend by the force of 
their own weight in a direct line, according to the 
natural tendency, forsooth ! of all bodies, the subtle 
virtuoso at last bethought himself that if every 
atom fell from its place in a straight line, they 
might fall long enough before any two of them en- 
countered. Hereupon he casts about for an expe- 
dient ; and what do you think it was ? Why truly 
his atoms had unaccountably got a trick of reeling , 
and so met and shook hands, and combined them- 
selves into a world. Now this is a mere school- 
boy's invention ; and yet it will not bring him off 
at last : for this motion of inclination is all preca- 
rious and arbitrary, and no more cause assigned 
for it, than for his depriving his atoms of that direct 
motion which is natural to gravitation. What a 
strange creature is a natural philosopher, erecting 
hypotheses without a physical cause? and that iu> 



BOOK THE FIRST. 13 

pertinently to his own design in doing so ? For if 
all his atoms must descend sideling, they will ne- 
ver join one another ; or, if some are to fall aslant, 
and some right down, just according as he lays his 
commands upon them ; this is teaching them to 
lead up courants and minuets. And then this 
tumultuary conflux of atoms to the disappointment 
of Democritus as well as Epicurus, could never, 
after all, have produced such a beautiful and regu- 
lar universe. Indeed the very supposing of an 
indivisible body proves him sufficiently defective 
and ignorant in his own way, as himself might 
have understood, if instead of unteaching his friend 
Polycenus geometry, he had submitted to learn a 
little of it from him. Democritus, who was a man 
of learning and a complete geometrician, allows 
the sun to be a very large body, while the other 
is contented with two feet, or thereabouts, for its 
diameter, making its real bigness the same, or 
much the same, as its apparent. Thus whatever 
he changes, he spoils ; and whatever he takes 
without altering belongs to Democritus ; as his 
atoms, his space, his representations or species t 
which obtruding themselves upon us, are the cause 
as well of thought as of sight; his apiria, or infi- 
nity ; his innumerable worlds, and his daily origi- 
nations of some, and dissolutions of others. These 
chimeras I know not what to make of; but yet, 
methinks, it is pity Democritus, after the applause 
which others have bestowed upon him, should lose 



14 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

all his reputation through the default of one of his 
most devoted and servile followers. Then as for 
that other part of philosophy which contains the 
mystery of disputation, and is termed logic, your 
oracle is absolutely unfurnished and defenceless: 
for he has nothing to say, not he, to definitions, 
divisions, and partitions ; neither will he put us in 
a way to form a conclusion, unravel a fallacy, or 
distinguish equivocals : he appropriates all discri- 
mination to the external senses; and affirms that 
if ever they should entertain a falsehood for a truth, 
we are destitute of any further means of discerning 
one from the other. And as for his ethics, the third 
part of his philosophy, when he brings into the light 
his moral end, it is a dishonorable and a sordid one. 
The grand proof which he urges for his position is 
fetched from this natural principle, that we should 
pursue pleasure and avoid trouble ; and therefore 
his division of things is into dekctables and detest- 
ablesn This is all Aristippicism revived, only the 
Cyrenaics managed their cause more artfully and 
ingeniously. Now human nature could not receive 
a greater affront than this implies. Our being, 
with its furniture and distinction, was certainly 
designed to much nobler purposes: and I cannot 
believe (though I know myself liable to error) that 
the original Torquatus took the enemies gold chain 
from % him, in order to the perception of any bodily 
pleasure ; or that in the time of his third consul- 
ship he engaged the Latins in the battle of Veseris, 



BOOK THE FIRST. 15 

for the sake of any sensual gratification. So when 
he gave his child the fatal blow with his own hand, 
preferring the rights and authority of the public 
establishment to the natural tenderness and duty 
of a parent, I suppose, the satisfaction of this dis- 
cipline, if he had any, was severely embittered by 
the relation. So again, when Lucius Torquatus, 
that was fellow consul with Cneius Octavius, treated 
his son, that had been adopted by Silanus, with 
such severity, upon articles exhibited against him 
by the Macedonian delegates, for acts of extortion, 
while he was prcetor in that province, strictly 
commanding him to come to his trial, then after 
an hearing of both parties, declaring that his be- 
haviour in his government had been unworthy of 
the family from, which he was descended, and 
banishing him for ever from his presence : will 
you say that the father when he did all this had 
any raptures and transports in his eye ? Not to 
enumerate the dangers, the toils, the calamities, 
which are welcome to every true patriot and pro- 
tector of his dependents, in such a rational defi- 
ance to all outward enjoyments as to embrace ex- 
tremities rather than forego a duty ; not to reckon 
up these, I say, let us descend to more familiar 
instances, though not weaker evidences. I appeal 
to yourselves, gentlemen, where is the nectar and 
ambrosia you taste in the several authors you con 
verse with, historians, philosophers, poets, and the 
many verses you have imprinted upon your me- 



!<? CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

mory? It will not serve the turn to tell me they are 
entertaining and diverting. No doubt the Torqua^ 
tuses found a pleasure too in what they did. But 
Epicurus is wiser than to put his cause upon that 
issue ; and so are yourselves, and every body that 
understands the merits of it. If here, as of course, 
it is demanded, how the Epicureans then come to 
be so numerous, among other causes, a principal 
one is this, that Epicurus is vulgarly conceived to 
maintain, that virtue and probity are essentially 
and intrinsically delightful ; and whether any re- 
gard be had to corporeal satisfactions or not, vir- 
tue and wisdom would be desirable irrespective- 
ly, and for themselves, which he can by no means 
away with. And therefore I can as little approve 
of Epicurus's opinion. But it is as good as could 
be expected from that illiterate man : for, I pre- 
sume, even Torquatus himself must acknowledge 
him to have been but a very superficial scholar. 
However, he had no reason to seduce other peo- 
ple from following their studies : though, it seems, 
he could not influence you in that respect. This 
was what I offered, not so much to explain myself, 
as to alarm Torquatus. In earnest, said Tria- 
rius with a smile, you have effectually stripped 
Epicurus of all his philosophy, and left him 
no pretension to cheer up his spirits, but only 
this ; that as extravagantly as he talks, you un- 
derstand his drift. His natural philosophy is 
borrowed ware, and all of it in your opinion bad ; 



BOOK THE FIRST. 17 

but none ef it so bad as his own alterations and 
amendments. He knew not one tittle of logic His 
placing the sovereign good in pleasure, is a con- 
ceit that is none of his own ; and the very choice 
discovers the shallowness of his judgment : for 
Aristippus had defended it before, and with a much 
better grace too. And when you have thus di- 
vested the man of common sense, it is no wonder 
you should make him a dance into the bargain. 
If I am to declare myself obliged, Sir, said I, 
to dissent from any man, would you have me do 
it without informing you what it is I dislike in him ? 
If I could receive all that Epicurus has taught, 
what should keep me from going over to him ? 
especially when I consider, that to learn his philo- 
sophy is no more than to learn a game. It is 
true, I think it beneath the dignity of a philo- 
sopher to blemish a dispute with contumelious and 
spiteful suggestions, passionate excursions, or a 
positive, peremptory obstinacy. But why dispu- 
tants may not fmdjlazvs as fast as they can, I do 
not apprehend. Most freely, says Torquatus, 
I agree with you there ; for it is impossible to dis- 
pute at all without the liberty of carping, as to 
dispute without impartiality and temper to any 
purpose. But for other matters, you shall have 
my answer immediately, if you will give yourself 
the trouble to hear it. What, said I, do you think 
I have been promising myself all this while ? Then 
the question was, whether he should take in all the 

D 



IS CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

parts of the Epicurean institution, or confine himself 
to the topic of pleasure, the point in controversy : 
and when I had left him to his choice, why then, 
said he, I will at present speak to the main ques- 
tion only, deferring the vindication of his physics 
for a more seasonable opportunity. And I do not 
question but to satisfy your scruples, and remove 
your prejudices about the deviatory motion of the 
atoms, the bigness of the sun, and the reasonable- 
ness of the improvements made by Epicurus upon 
Democritus. For this time I shall only explain 
myself upon the subject of pleasure, neither ad- 
vancing new notions, nor any other that I think 
you will have reason to reject. For my part, 
said I, an unconvincible humour is my aversion ; 
and assure yourself, if you can fairly prove your 
point, you make me your convert. Then I do 
not despair, said he, provided you will be as good 
as your word ; hut to prevent the interruptions of 
queres and replies, I crave leave to carry on my 
discourse in a continued series. And when for 
that I had left him to his own discretion, thus he 
addressed the company : I will begin in that me- 
thod which my master observed before me, and 
define the subject of the question ; not that I sup- 
pose you want any such instruction, but that we 
may proceed more regularly. It is therefore de- 
manded what is our chief and ultimate good, into 
which, as it is agreed among all philosophers what- 
soever, the rest are universally resolved, and itself 



BOOK THE FIRST. }§ 

into none. Epicurus will have this to be pleasure ; 
as, on the contrary, pain to be the greatest of evils ; 
and he thus proposes to prove it. Every animal, 
says he, is no sooner born, but it begins the chace 
after pleasure, and indulges itself in that, as the 
only expedient of its well-being ; while to the ut- 
most of its power it avoids and rescues itself from 
pain; and this in an unprejudiced and an unde- 
praved state of nature. And therefore he denies 
any necessity of expostulating for a reason why we 
should affect pleasure and abhor pain. These he 
accounts the immediate results of sensation, as we 
perceive that fire makes us warm, that snow is 
white, and honey sweet ; of all which particulars, 
we need no other demonstration to convince us, 
than that of impressions from without, the difference 
being wide between syllogistical deductions, and 
the simple perceptions of sense: the one unlocks 
doubts and obscurities, and lets you into truth ; 
the other is a thorough-fare, and lets in truth 
upon you. Now in regard a man without any 
senses is no better than a carcase; from hence it 
follows, that nature is the best judge of her own 
desires and aversions : and that pleasure is the im- 
mediate object of the first, and pain of the other. 
For is there any thing which a man is capable of 
perceiving and distinguishing in order to pursue or 
shun it, besides pleasure or pain? Others there are 
of Epicurus's disciples that carry the thing further ; 
and not enduring that the distinctions of good and 



20 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

evil should be ingrossed by the senses, understand 
It as a dictate of the judgment, and a rule of right 
reason, that pleasure is in its own nature desirable, 
and pain odious. And say that the consequence, 
which is, that we should pursue the first, and 
avoid the last, is an innate principle. But another 
party, to which I properly belong, observing how 
strangely the dispute concerning excellency of plea- 
sure and the evil of pain has been bandied about, 
are of opinion, that we ought not to manage our 
cause with pertness and bigotry, but lay our rea- 
sonings carefully together, and confer at large upon 
the nature of pleasure and pain. Wherefore for 
the easier detection and disproof of their error that 
declaim against pleasure, and speak favourably of 
pain, I will set the whole matter in a true light, 
and give you the sense of what I find suggested to 
our purpose by our great alchymist of truth andpra- 
jecior of human felicity. Nobody conceives an 
aversion to pleasure ; but because, if we take im- 
prudent measures to attain it, we suffer for it in 
the consequences. As on the other hand, nobody 
can be a friend to pain, as pain ; but yet it may 
meet with a favourable reception, because it fre- 
quently happens, that pain and labour prove a ne- 
cessary means towards the procurement of exqui- 
site pleasures. To propose a trivial instance; 
which of us three would fatigue himself with our 
bodily exercises, if he did not find his account in 
it ? At the same time shall I blame a man for pre- 



BOOK THE FIRST. 21 

fencing that pleasure which he can purchase with- 
out any manner of trouble, or for excusing himself 
from that pain which is not productive of pleasure? 
Notwithstanding, when the blandishments of any 
present delights prevail so far as to intoxicate and 
incapacitate us for judging what difficulties and 
inconveniences we had better embrace, we are 
highly to be blamed, and deserve to have no fa- 
vour shewed us ; as do also those people, whose 
effeminacy, and lightness, and antipathy to pain 
and labour betray them into dishonourable courses. 
But here the right distinction is very obvious. As 
thus ; when we are free from all conditional bars 
and limitations, and warranted to make directly 
after that which pleases us best, then we must re- 
sign up ourselves entirely to the pleasure, and 
admit no treaty with the pain. But when, as it 
falls out sometimes, either our duty or our circum- 
stances oblige us to give up our pleasures, and 
wade into vexations, there is this choice yet re- 
served for every wise man, either to secure to him- 
self greater pleasures at the price of lesser, or to 
escape severer vexations by accepting lighter. This 
is my notion of the business; and I would gladly 
understand why the instances of our family will 
not agree with it — seeing you were pleased, upon 
recollection, out of respect and kindness to fasten 
there. A notable stratagem (if it would take) 
to stroke your adversary into a peaceable indif- 
ference ! But, I beseech you, what account will 



22 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

you give us of their acting as they did? Can 
you believe when the enemy was charged so 
briskly, and their own flesh and blood handled so 
roughly, that no ends or interests were to be served ? 
The very beasts of prey are wiser than to expose 
and disorder themselves for nothing : and can you 
fancy that persons of such a character would have 
acted so singularly, if they knew not why? Hereafter 
we shall see what grounds they went upon. At 
present it is enough to be assured, that if they did 
what became them, they acted upon some other 
motive than that of simple and abstracted virtue. 
One of them carried off his enemy's chain; and 
when he had done so, made armour on it for his 
own security. Well, but there was a dangerous 
obstacle that faced him, called an army. And what 
could be the temptation then ? Why a prospect 
of raising his reputation, and fortifying his interest 
with applause and popularity. The same person 
knocked his child on the head; but had he been 
so rash and inhuman as to do such a thing with- 
out a reason, I should blush to own myself his 
relation. Now, if it was his intent rather to de- 
stroy his own quiet, than suffer the military disci- 
pline to be infringed, or his orders and authority 
neglected among the soldiers, when the danger 
was imminent ; he made a wise provision for the 
safety of his countrymen, well-knowing that his 
own was comprehended therein. The same ob- 
servations are applicable to a vast variety of in- 



BOOK THE FIRST. £3 

stances. And as industriously as both of you, 
especially my antagonist, who thrashes at the study 
of antiquity, exercise your lungs upon the cha- 
racters of gallant and extraordinary men, and 
magnify their actions, as not resulting from any 
mercenary considerations, but purely from a prin- 
ciple of virtue and honour, you are tied to retract, 
provided, as in the premisses, it be made a rule of 
option, that lesser satisfactions are to be quitted 
for the obtaining of greater, and lesser inconve- 
niences borne with to divert worse. And thus 
much may suffice in relation to your instances of 
glorious and heroic actions, it being by this time 
proper to come forward and observe how directly 
all virtue tends to pleasure. And here I shall ex- 
plain what it is I mean by pleasure, that so the 
common misconstructions may be prevented, and 
the seriousness and even austerity of that philoso- 
phy, which passes for such a luscious, effeminate 
system, may be set forth. For indeed that sort of - 
pleasure which strikes the senses, and affects the 
economy of our bodies with an obliging influence, 
we do not pursue exclusively of the other incom- 
parable pleasure, which consists in indclenci/, or 
an exemption from pain : for since pleasure is no- 
thing else but the agreeableness, nor pain but the 
disagreeableness of things to the percipient ; and 
sincethe very removal and intermission of pain is 
a thing so very agreeable to us, no wonder if we 
pronounce the absence of pain to be a pleasure. 



24 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

Thus for the purpose, the consequence of taking 
off hunger, and extinguishing thirst is an actual 
satisfaction : and so, as to all other particulars, a 
cessation of disturbance is the very birth of plea- 
sure. Hence it was that Epicurus denied a me- 
dium between pleasure and pain, because that 
medium, as understood by those who talk of it, 
implies freedom from pain; which he will have to 
be not a pleasure barely, but the queen of all plea- 
sures ; it being impossible but that every man who 
feels at any time within himself after what manner 
he is affected, should be sensible either of some 
pleasure or some molestation : whereas it is Epi- 
curus's maxim, that the sublimest pleasure termi- 
nates in an entire discharge from pain ; and that 
although it further admits of specifications and 
variety, yet it is capable of no higher improvements. 
Upon this occasion, I remember, my father has 
told me, when he has been in the humour of ral- 
lying stoicism, that at Athens, in one of the Ceramici, 
there is a statue of Chrysippus sitting, and holding 
out his hand, as if he would propose his favourite 
quere, Do you find any cravings in your hand in the 
present crisis of its affairs? None, I dare say, 
which yet it w ould not but have, if pleasure were 
a real good ; and therefore it r cannot be such. My 
father was positive, the statue itself, if able to 
speak, would talk more h propos. It is true, the 
argument holds handsomely against the Cyrenaics ; 
but Epicurus is by no means concerned in it. If 



BOOK THE FIRST. 25 

there were no pleasure but that which exhilarates 
and captivates the senses, the mere absence of 
pain, without the force of a little lively pleasure, 
could never have given his hand content : but if 
Epicurus's indolence be the highest of all plea- 
sures, we may grant Chrysippus the first supposi- 
tion, that his hand, while he held it out, felt no 
want of any thing; but for the next, that if pleasure 
were a real good, his hand would be grasping at it, 
we must beg his pardon ; for it could not possibly 
feel the want of any thing, because that which is 
free from pain is in a state of pleasure* Further, 
to make it plain that pleasure is our utmost good> 
let us represent to ourselves the condition of a 
man perpetually regaled with all the variety con- 
ceivable of the most ravishing pleasures incident 
either to the mind or body, without the least alloy 
of pain, either present or approaching: can any 
condition of life be more advantageous, or more 
desirable than this ? especially since it must include 
such a firmness of soul, as renders it proof against 
the fears of death or pain ; death being a loss of 
all sensation, and pain either long and moderate, 
or acute and short ; so that which ever it proves, 
there is room for comfort ; though to finish the 
felicity of it, it is necessary that the dread of a 
Deity be forgotten, and the sweetness of past plea- 
sures very frequently recollected. Again : let us 
imagine a man afflicted with the saddest agonies 
and tortures of mind and body, utterly despairing 



%6 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

of any relief or relaxation, and wholly lost as well 
to the remembrance of past, and the expectation 
of future, as the fruition of any present pleasure ; 
what could we call him but the very accomplish- 
ment and idea of misery itself? If therefore a 
life of torment is the most detestable, undoubtedly 
it is the greatest evil, and consequently a life of 
pleasure must be the greatest good, on this side 
whereof the mind of man finds nothing for it finally 
to fix upon ; as there is nothing besides pain, as that 
comprehends all sorts of terrors and molestations, 
which simply and from itself can either disturb or 
shatter us. In short, pleasure and pain are the 
first occasions and springs of all affection, aversion, 
and action ; whence it is evident, that all the con- 
cerns of wisdom and virtue are to be reckoned into 
the account of a life of pleasure. And thus while 
we convince ourselves, that when we have said all, 
a life of jollity and pleasure is the summum bonum, 
the last and the completest good, into which all 
Others must be resolved, and itself into none ; there 
are some people abroad that widely mistaking the 
intendment and scope of nature, affirm, that virtue 
and glory claim that denomination ; an absurdity, 
from which Epicurus, if they would lend him an 
ear, would easily free them: for what becomes of 
the dignity and value of all your fine charming 
virtues, in case they are no longer effective of plea- 
sure ? But for the sake of health, we should look 
upon the science of medicine as an idle piece of 



BOOK THE FIRST, $7 

euriosity ; and a pilot is esteemed, not for his the- 
ory of navigation, but the benefit of his conduct: 
accordingly wisdom, or the science of living, were 
it no more than a barren amusement, would be un- 
deserving of our application, whereas it claims our 
attention, because we are by it put in a way to 
come at pleasure. What pleasure I mean, I hope 
you know so well by this time, that I need not fear 
the odium of the word will stand in the way of my 
argument. The thing which I drive at is this. 
All the unhappiness of our lives is notoriously im- 
putable to the false estimates we pass upon the 
nature of things, and these misapprehensions fre- 
quently forfeit us our choicest pleasures, and lay 
us open to the most melancholy discomposures ; 
against which, wisdom is our antidote, as being 
that which subdues our fears, and our desires, cor- 
rects our vain opinions and prejudices, and cer- 
tainly brings us to the possession of true pleasure. 
It is this alone that quells our solicitude, and all 
our panic fears, that slakes the vehemence of our 
appetites, and teaches us the art of living happily, 
our appetites being so insatiable as to bring de- 
struction upon ourselves and our neighbours, upon 
entire families, nay upon whole common-wealths. 
These are the fountains of emulation, ruptures, 
faction, and war. And yet as wildly and impetu- 
ously as they are raised against other people, the 
tempests and tumults they excite in our own breasts 
aiesuch, that the comforts of life are totally lost 



2S CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

in them ; and till a man has the discretion to 
prune away his levity, and his mistakes, and con- 
tain himself within the restrictions of nature, it is 
not in his power to live without disturbance and 
terror. To this purpose is that most useful and 
edifying division, which Epicurus has introduced 
of our desires into those that are both natural and 
necessary ; those that are natural but not neces- 
sary ; and those that are neither natural nor ne- 
cessary. The first may be satisfied easily and 
cheaply : the second will also come to very rea- 
sonable terms, requiring no more than a moderate 
competency of what provisions offer themselves : 
but the third will not be restrained or stinted at all. 
Now then, as sure as ignorance and false reasonings 
over-cast the serenity of human life, and nothing 
but wisdom rescues us from the tyranny of our 
inclinations and terrors, and makes us a match for 
the malice of fortune, and masters of our own ease 
and quiet : so surely it is pleasure we propose to 
ourselves, when we labour to be wise, and fear of 
infelicity that keeps us from courses of indiscretion. 
Thus ought we to be ambitious of having a com- 
mand over ourselves, not for the sake of the virtue, 
but the inward satisfaction, complacency, and har- 
mony arising out of it. For this virtue is that 
which governs us in all our pursuits and aversions, 
inasmuch as it is not enough for us to distinguish- 
between what methods are fit or unfit to be taken, 
but our determinations must be followed with suit- 



BOOK THE FIRST. 29 

able resolutions and practices ; whereas usually 
when we come to know what we have to trust to, 
some one phantom or other of pleasure enchants 
us; we yield ourselves prisoners to our own desires, 
and lose all apprehensions of the consequences ; 
and so for the love perhaps of a poor insignificant 
satisfaction, that might have been obtained some 
other way, or if not, it had been never the worse 
for us, we run ourselves into diseases, distresses, 
and disgraces ; nay, frequently upon the very 
weapons of public justice : while they who con- 
trive and regulate their pleasures in such a man- 
ner that no subsequent inconveniences attend them, 
and deal so ingenuously by themselves as not to 
do, for any solicitations of pleasure, what they are 
satisfied ought not to be done, receive always dou- 
ble interest for any pleasure they quit ; and to 
put by a greater evil they surrender themselves to 
a less. Whence we infer, that as moderation and 
temperance are not desirable qualities, as they 
retrench our pleasures, but oniy as they commute 
them to our advantage, so extravagances and in- 
temperance are not purely upon their own account 
detestable. The same is to be said of fortitude. 
It is not for the blessedness either of taking or en- 
during pains that we give proofs of our patience, 
our vigilance, nav our industry, and even our bra- 
very itself: but these, we know, are the best phy- 
sic toward a cure of the solicitudes and discou- 
ragements of human life, and a philosophical garde 



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tezi7»rrLirT. Li: :: r:i: jc.e. 1: 




- 

: 7 . . ; ■ r 7 . _ - 7 



BOOK THE FIRST. 31 

from an assurance of all those felicities which are 
incompatible with a corrupted conscience, just as 
precipitancy, impetuosity and impotency teaze and 
torment the mind; for the consciousness of justice 
is a charm against all discomposure, whereas your 
knave's lying close and undetected for some time, 
can by no means make him secure that his practises 
shall never be discovered. For foul play creates 
suspicions, which ripen into rumours, and then 
come the informers and the judges, unless the 
very parties betray themselves, as they did under 
your consulship; or if some people of wealth 
and interest, fancy themselves sufficiently fenced 
against prosecution and disturbance from men, 
yet there is the dread of a Deity which they 
cannot elude ; and those dismal apprehensions 
which haunt and macerate them night and day, 
pass into a certain earnest, and a convincing proof 
of the divine vengeance. How great, alas ! are 
the odds between the advantages proposed in doing 
an ill thing, and the mortifications we suffer for it 
from our own consciences, from public justice, and 
public odium. And yet some people's avarice, 
pride, ambition, lust, luxury, and vices in general 
are so insatiable, that the more they extend their 
conquest, the more they are encouraged and ani- 
mated, and will not be reclaimed, and therefore 
must be restrained. Upon the whole, we see right 
reason binds us to the duties of justice, equity, and 
honesty. Man is but a poor helpless infant, and 



$£ fclCERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

fair-dealing is his interest, and the best means td 
compass his ends. By right, our generosity should 
be the steward of our fortunes, and abilities, 
which, if impowered, will procure us the main in- 
gredients of a comfortable life, that is, the bene- 
volence and favour of others ; and that without 
crossing upon any plausible temptation, for the 
wants of nature are easily supplied without our 
betaking ourselves to injurious methods, and of 
all other wants we are to take no notice, for the 
matter of them is unworthy the least regard, and 
the booty cannot prove so valuable as the injury 
prejudicial. Wherefore we dare not affirm even 
of justice that it is eligible and valuable for itself, but 
because of the satisfactions which attend it, for 
there is a mighty consolation in being esteemed and 
beloved, inasmuch as the interests of life are there- 
by confirmed, and so the pleasures of it doubled. 
And therefore villany and disingenuity ought to 
scare us not so much by the calamities which they 
bring upon ill men, as because they banish repose 
and cheerfulness from the mind that entertains 
them. Now then if all the glorious pretensions 
of virtue itself which your other philosophers have 
spent their harangues upon, dwindle into nothing, 
unless consummated by pleasure ; and pleasure is 
the only thing which by its own force invites and 
attracts us to itself, it is apparent that pleasure must 
be our main and ultimate good, and a happy life, 
only another name for a life of pleasure. ,Mj 



BOOK THE FIRST. 33 

principal assertion being thus made out, I shall 
now briefly dispatch some remaining observations. 
Whether pleasure and pain are the true moral 
ends, is not questioned by any of our sect : but 
the error of some among us lies in their ignorance 
of the true origins of pleasure and pain. It can- 
not be denied that the pleasures and pains of the 
mind spring from the pleasures and pains of the 
body : and I must own, whatever Epicureans 
think otherwise, as I know there are a great many 
superficial ones that do, must not, as you observe, 
hope to carry their point. The pleasures, it is true, 
and disturbances of the mind affect us with joy 
and sorrow ; but then both of them begin at the 
body, and because of the intimate relation that is 
between them, it comes to pass that the pleasure 
and grief which the mind perceives, exceeds the 
pleasures and pains of the body, for the body is 
sensible of none but the objects present; whereas 
the mind moreover employs itself upon precedent 
and future. And if when the body is in pain, the 
mind is proportionably afflicted, any expectations 
of eternal and infinite evils, must add very consi- 
derably to the weight of our troubles, as on the 
other hand, to be free from such apprehensions 
must mightily increase our pleasures. In short, 
it is past dispute that the richest satisfactions, and 
the blackest anxieties of the mind conduce more 
either to the happiness or unhappiness of our lives, 
than either of them, if their duration be measured 

F 



54 CICERO OF MORAL £&M. 

only by the continuance of the pleasures and painS 
of the body. Further, it is to be intimated that 
dissatisfaction does not immediately succeed upon 
intermission of pleasure, unless a positive sorrow 
supplies the place of a departed pleasure ; although 
intermission of pain is itself a very sensible refresh- 
ment, whether accompanied by any bodilv plea- 
sures or not. And this hint sufficiently illustrates 
the choiceness of the pleasure of indolency. Again, 
as the prospect of a future good is a wonderful sup- 
port and encouragement, so is the remembrance 
and recapitulation of satisfactions past and gone. 
Men of sense will entertain and amuse themselves 
with reviving the images and ideas of the sweets 
they have formerly tasted, and none but a fool 
troubles his head with recollecting the miseries he 
has undergone* It is in our own power as well to 
bury past perplexities in oblivion, as to retrieve 
and dwell upon the very phantom of what has here- 
tofore delighted us. And those recollections, if 
enforced with earnestness and attention, will as 
the matter of them appears either hurtful or benefi- 
cial in its nature, accordingly disturb or compose. 
Behold then how plain, direct and admirable a me- 
thod I recommend to make you happy ! for since 
we cannot wish ourselves a greater happiness than 
to be absolutely free from pain and disquietude, 
and to enjoy the completest pleasures imaginable 
both of mind and body, what is there a way that 
can further contribute toward our attaining that 



BOOK THE FIRST. 5£ 

chief and ultimate good which we seek for ? Out 
upon that voluptuary Epicurus, is continually in 
your mouths, and yet he proclaims it an impossi- 
bility for him that would not keep up to the rules 
of wisdom, justice and ingenuity, tolive happily, and 
as impossible for him that does, to live unhappily : 
for if there can be no peace as long as there is fac- 
tion and rebellion in a body politic, nor in a fami- 
ly where the leading members of it are divided ; 
for the same reason the mind that is at variance 
with itself is not in a condition to relish any thing 
that may be called a savory and a genuine plea- 
sure. Where inconsistent purposes and resolutions 
take place, ease and tranquillity have no concerns. 
If any harsher bodily distempers create such la- 
mentable perturbations, how much more must the 
diseases of our minds impair our happiness ? By 
the diseases of the mind, I mean all our excessive 
and fantastical desires after riches, glory, dominion, 
sensual pleasures. Add to these discontent, dis- 
appointment, and vexation, which distract and 
consume us while we will not understand that our 
minds ought to take no impressions but of bodily pain 
either present or in reversion. And because every 
unwise man labours under one or other of these 
diseases, therefore we meet with nobody that is 
properly happy. Besides, death like a stone, suppose, 
over Tantalus, is perpetually dangling above our 
heads ; and then there is another thing called super- 
§iition that certainly if indulged destroys our quiet? 



36 CICERO OF MORAL END3, 

Nor is it in the power of any unwise man to enjoy 
any present comforts, or the remembrance of 
any past, but barely the hopes of future ; the un- 
certainty of which fills him with fear and an- 
guish, and when in the upshot he finds that the 
gay promises he had made himself of wealth, 
empire, greatness, and glory come to nothing, he 
loses all patience : for, indeed, let him act as vigor- 
ously as he will, it is impossible for such a man 
to find fuel enough for the flame of his own pas- 
sions and appetites. There are also your puny, 
abject, disconsolate, malicious, envious, peevish, 
unconversable, exceptious, unaccountable sorts 
of souls, not forgetting the amorous, impertinent, 
impudent, lewd, intemperate, idle, insignificant, 
inconstant : and these poor wretches never know 
what means a moment's relaxation from misery. 
So that happiness cannot be the portion of fopls, 
nor unhappiness of understanding men. And this 
we prove from principles which are far more just 
and rational than those of the stoics, who will have 
nothing to be properly good, but an empty chimera 
of their own which they have dignified with the 
title of honestum, affirming that virtue lodged in 
this honestum or principle of honour and honesty r , 
alone and exclusively of all pleasure, suffices to 
render us completely happy. Not but this is a 
real truth too in one sense, (and instead of opposing 
it so understood, we will stand by it) for it is con- 
stantly Epicurus's character of a wise man, that he 



BOOK THE FIRST, 37 

governs his appetites, that he despises death, that 
he is not afraid to make his own conclusions when 
he is thinking of the gods, nor unwilling to leave 
the world when it is convenient. So soon as he is 
thus disposed he cannot help being happy ; at least 
the pleasures of his life, though blended with a 
few disturbances, will be predominant. He freely 
indulges himself in his meditations upon delights 
that are fled, and makes the most of objects and 
opportunities that lie before him, expecting, with- 
out depending upon things to come, and ever se- 
curing the present. He steers aloof from all the 
ill habits mentioned before, and upon comparing 
the life of a fool with his own, is cheered and 
satisfied. If any uneasiness attacks him, it is 
never of that force, but that still he is master 
of a superior proportion of happiness. What 
can be nobler theorems than those of Epicu- 
rus, that fortune has very little power over a 
wise man, and that he governs the world by the 
force and authority of his understanding, and that 
a state of mortality fills up the measure of his hap* 
piness as effectually as immortality itself could. 
Your logic Epicurus neglected, as affording no 
helps either in the business of morality or argu* 
mentation: and yet his natural philosophy abounds 
with instances and exemplifications of the force 
both of that art and rhetoric in their several 
branches. But it is the knowledge of nature's 
phenomena that dissipates those terrors which else 



38 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

had imposed upon us, that cures our superstition, 
and hardens us against the fear of death ; and 
what is more, until we have thoroughly examined 
what are the severals which the order and economy 
of the universe require, we have not done all that 
lies in our power toward finishing our behaviour 
and manners. But then, provided we keep close 
to our general criterion, or determining rule, as a 
divine irradiation of truth from heaven, and once 
come to form and fix rightly our notions of things, 
it will not be in the power of wit or words to drive 
us from our hold. Neither yet so long as we are 
ignorant of the nature^ and properties of beings, 
can we prove the verity of sensible representations 
and suggestions. All ideas of the mind are derived 
from the senses ; if these therefore are all faithful, 
as Epicurus tells us, we are capacitated in some 
sort both to apprehend and comprehend. But if 
these are to be cashiered* and there can be no such 
thing as a right perception, the reasons of either 
position must be such as demonstrate both to be 
precarious; over and above the frustration of all 
our intercourses and enterprises which such a 
scepticism implies. Upon the whole, our natural 
philosophy is our ormtan against the fears of death, 
or the horrors of a religious melancholy. It dis- 
covers the secret dependances of natural causes, 
and makes us easy and secure. It shews us what 
and how various our appetites are, and whence we 
may best form our measures to regulate them* 



BOOK THE FIRST. 59 

And lastly it serves for a rule of judgment and 
science to state our distinctions by, between truths 
and untruths. I must not make an end until I 
have explained myself upon one head more, and 
that is the subject of friendship, which you tell us 
is never to be contracted, if pleasure be the great- 
est good, though Epicurus declares it his opinion, 
that wisdom among all the ingredients of happiness 
has not a nobler, a richer, or a more delicious one 
than friendship. And this he did not only assert 
in his writings, but gave a practical proof of it in 
his life and conversation. How singular a com- 
mendation this is, appears from the rare instances 
of friendship, which the mythology of the ancients, 
as voluminous and as full of variety as it is, con- 
tains, at most amounting but to three couples, 
•when we have traced them from Theseus to Ores- 
tes. But O ! what a numerous, what an harmo- 
nious company of friends did Epicurus crowd into 
his own little habitation ! and the Epicureans have 
ever followed the example. But to return ; the dis- 
putants of our sect have managed the question of 
friendship upon three different bottoms. One party 
of them that confess the communicative satisfac- 
tions which pass from friend to friend, are not so 
desirable upon their own account as every indivi- 
dual's proper pleasure, (a confession very prejudi- 
cial, as some people conceive, to the interest of 
friendship) yet vigorously maintain their point, and, 
to do them justice, with very good success, it ap- 



40 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

pearing to them an absurdity, that the virtues before 
specified should be inseparable from pleasure, and 
friendship not so. Even common sense prompts 
us to friendly associations and alliances upon the 
view of the many and mighty dangers and frights 
that go along with unconversableness and solitude. 
For these alliances make us bold and sprightly, 
and are the certain fore-runners of an advancing 
happiness. For if malice, envy, and disregard are 
the bane of tranquillity, the consequence will be, 
that friendliness, I will not say promotes, but com- 
pletes our satisfactions, as well common as per- 
sonal : and as fast as it furnishes out the present, it 
heightens them on with promises of future. Seeing 
therefore the comforts of life must be very uncer- 
tain and volatile, unless fixed by friendship; and 
friendship is no way to be cultivated but by loving 
our friends no less than ourselves : pleasure is as 
necessarily the concomitant, as mutual affections 
are the indentures of friendship; and hence it is 
that friends equally share one another's content or 
discontent, and every wise man has as quick a 
sense of the circumstances of his friend as of his 
own, and will bustle as briskly to gratify his friend 
as to gratify himself. So that whatever has been 
urged to prove that virtue and pleasure cannot be 
alienated from each other, may as well be applied 
to prove that neither can friendship and pleasure 
be divorced ; according to what Epicurus has ex- 
cellently remarked, that the same philosophy which 



BOOK THE FIRST. 41 

has baffled the damping supposition of an eternal 
or permanent state of misery, has pronounced 
friendship the best security of human life. A se* 
eond sort of Epicureans, and a very shrewed one 
too, apprehending more danger than those of the 
first hypothesis form your ill-natured objections, 
and doubting whether the cause of friendly offices 
will not be lost, if we make pleasure the scope and 
end of them, answer you, that the first motive and 
occasion of striking an acquaintance and confeder- 
ating, is the pleasure of compassing an amicable 
union, which being wrought up into familiarity, the 
endearments prevail so far at last, that, all consi- 
derations of profit thrown aside, one friend loves 
another for the other's proper sake. Thus we com- 
monly entertain a partiality for particular places, 
as cloisters, towns, schools, fields, dogs, horses, 
games, because they have been the stages or in- 
struments of our exercises or diversions : how 
much more natural is it then for conversation to 
breed and heighten friendship ? A third sort al- 
ledge articles of a tacit compact, wherein all wise 
men are parties, and whereby they are obliged to 
Jove their friends full as well as themselves. This 
we all know is practicable, and the method holds 
true in fact. I need not add how subservient it is 
to our happiness, this mingling of interests. And 
now we have laid together an account of the whole 
matter ; by which it appears, that the doctrine of 
pleasure's being the summum bomtm, is so far from. 



42 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

weakening the foundations of friendship, that with- 
out it there can be no such thing. And if the rea- 
sonableness of what has been insisted upon is, 
as it is, as bright and radiant as the sun in the 
meridian; if nature herself seals it all with her 
own testimony, if that testimony be further corro- 
borated by the full and unbiassed evidence of our 
own senses ; nay, if children, infants, and even the 
dumb animals themselves, antecedently to any de- 
generacies, and prepossessions, upon the bare 
dictate and instinct of their natures, give us to un- 
derstand, that nothing is grateful to our being but 
pleasure, nothing disagreeable but pain ; what 
veneration and acknowledgments are due to the 
man, that having first soberly and rightly digested 
the lessons which nature taught him, has put us 
all in a way, if we have but our wits about us, to 
make our own lives easy, quiet, and pleasant ? If 
he was nothing of a scholar, it was because he 
would not seem upon any terms to extend the pro- 
vince of learning beyond the study of human hap- 
piness. You, I warrant, would have advised him to 
do, as I and Triarius here have done by your ad- 
vice, play the fool and waste his time in conning over 
the poets ; or else to follow 7 Plato's example, and 
lay out himself upon music, geometry, arithmetic, 
and astronomy. All of them amusements that 
proceed upon principles notoriously false; and 
which, though they were never so solid, signify not 
a rush towards the improving of our lives, that is, 



BOOK THE FIRST. 4S 

of our pleasures. What? would you have had him 
to have employed his hours upon the sciences afore- 
said, and to have spared all his laborious, beneficial 
enquiries about the conduct and regulation of life ! 
No, no ; the men that want better teaching, are 
they who require of a philosopher, when he is be- 
yond his climacteric^ to make the elements of his 
education his business: they, and not Epicurus. 
Then he concluded in these words ; you have now, 
sir, what I had to propose, and I expect you will 
vouchsafe me your sentiments upon it ; and then 
I shall have my ends of you, which, for want of a 
fair opportunity, I could never have before. 



CICERO 



OF 



MORAL ENDS. 



BOOK II. 

Immediately they both turned their eyes upon 
me; and when I observed them expecting, I told 
them in the first place I would not be guilty 
of that which I had condemned in the philoso- 
phers ; of reading a lecture upon a question. 
Did ever Socrates, that great master in the faculty, 
take such a course? It was an abuse brought in by 
the sophists, as they were called. Leontinus Gor- 
gias, one of that tribe, was the first man that pre- 
sumed to frequent the public exercises and chal- 
lenge a question ; I mean, demand a subject to be 
disputed upon off-hand. This was bold, or ra- 
ther impudent ; if our philosophers, that after- 
wards trod in Gorgias's steps, can forgive the 
term. Though, as we learn from Plato, Socrates 
routed the sophists as he pleased, and particularly 
the challenger aforesaid. His way was to put 
questions and receive answers, and to make the 
person he conferred with explain his own opinions; 
and then he spoke again to those answers, as he 



46 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

saw convenient. This manner of disputing in pro- 
cess of time grew quite out of use, till it was re- 
vived by Arcesilas, who made his auditors open 
their minds to him instead of inquiring what was 
his, and afterwards he came in with his animad- 
versions upon their propositions, which neverthe- 
less they were permitted to defend as long as 
they were able. The general and ordinary pro- 
cedure was, and is still, among the academics, 
to have the question proposed, and then the pro- 
posers keep silence. As thus ; Pleasure, say you, 
is according to my sense of things, the summum 
bonum : whereupon immediately follows the dis- 
proof at large, in a fair and full dissertation ; the 
assigner of the question being not conceived to 
hold it as he has been pleased to state it, but to 
call for such reasons as any body else can object. 
It happens our affair is in a great forwardness, 
Torquatus having already not only informed us 
how he holds the question, but why he holds it so. 
And notwithstanding, sir, your discourse, as you 
continued it in one thread, was extremely taking, 
yet perhaps it had been more advisable, as parti- 
culars came to be urged in order, and when what one 
side or the other granted or denied was well under- 
stood, then to have deduced your particular con- 
clusions from the premisses agreed upon, until you 
had gone through all parts of the dispute. For a 
running oration is like a rapid stream : it carries 
all before it, but with such violence and precipita- 
tion, that there is no laying hold upon, or making 



BOOK THE SECOND. 47 

prize of any thing. In all methodical and rational 
inquiries the law-form of ea res agatur, pray keep 
to that, must be allowed for a leading direction ; 
for if we will dispute, we must be first agreed upon 
the matter we dispute about : so says Plato in his 
Phaedrus; and Epicurus himself has approved of 
it, and passed it into a standing law ; not observ- 
ing the notorious inconsistency of this rule with 
another of his, prohibiting definitions, without the 
help of which it is very often impossible for the 
parties in suspense to agree upon the meaning of 
the matter in debate ; as particularly in the case 
before us. We are looking out for the ultimate 
good. And after a thousand arguings about it, pr& 
and co??, how much the wiser, think you, are we like 
to be until we have settled and paired our notions, 
as of good m general, so of an ultimate good in par- 
ticular. And these illustrations and characterizings 
of the forms and essences of things are called defi- 
nitions. You yourself stumbled upon them some- 
times — for want of due caution ! else you had omit- 
ted your excellent account of the last or final good, 
that it is that good which is the scope and end of 
all our commendable actions, and which is never 
pursued for the sake of any thing else. I suppose, 
had you thought it of consequence, you would not 
have scrupled to give us also a definition oibonum y 
good in general, as that it is the object of our na- 
tural desires, or that it is every thing that is real- 
ly beneficial, or advances our welfare, or creates 



4& CICERO OF MORAL ENDS, 

w a pleasure. It should seem then, you can re- 
concile yourself as often as you see fit to the busi^ 
ness of defining ; and if so, give me leave to put 
you to the trouble of defining pleasure, the subject 
of our present disquisition. Is it supposable, said 
he, that any body can be ignorant of the nature 
of pleasure, or demand a definition to give him 
a light into it? But that for my own part I 
know, said I, how true and adequate an idea of 
pleasure I have, I could find in my heart to confess 
myself an exception to your Is it supposable ; but 
let it suffice that a certain philosopher, who goes 
by the name of Epicurus, as carefully as he inculr 
cates the expediency of learning the significations of 
words, not only hesitates and varies in the import- 
ance of the word pleasure, but utterly mistakes it, 
I profess, a glorious paradox ! replied he smiling, 
that the man who asserts pleasure with all his force 
to be our utmost good, the perfection and comple- 
ment of all our felicity, should not conceive what 
pleasure is? In earnest, either Epicurus did not 
understand the nature of pleasure; or, if he did, 
no mortal beside himself ever understood it. 
I was asked how that appeared. I replied, that 
every body meant by pleasure, no more than 
the satisfactions and gratifications of sense. Well ! 
said Torquatus, and does JSpicunis take no cogr 
nizance at all of such a sort of pleasure ? Oft- 
ener, said I, than makes for his credit ; as wheQ 
fcp frankly declares if there be any other good be* 



BOOK THE SECOND, 4$ 

sides good eating, good drinking, good music, and 
something else not fit to be named, he neither 
apprehends where, or what it is. I appeal to 
yourself; have 1 misrepresented him? And what 
if he has affirmed thus much ? said Torquatus, 
where is the harm, if you will put that favourable 
construction upon the words which they will very 
well bear, and I will undertake to vindicate. O, 
no question ! said I, and pray be proud withal of 
your being listed under the pink of penetration, the 
only bashful poor creature that ever seized upon 
the title of wise! for Metrodorus did not write 
himself so, but Epicurus very graciously conferred 
that honour upon him. As the seven sages had 
the same epithet adjudged them by the general 
consent and suffrage of the world : but no matter 
for that; as long as it is plain Epicurus in the 
passage before quoted means by pleasure the same 
thing that other people do, a certain delightful 
tremor in the senses, called hi Greek rj^ovrj, in 
Latin voluptas. It was demanded then, what I 
took offence at. I will tell you, sir, said L, and 
really not so much with a design to reprimand ei- 
ther yourself or Epicurus, as for our better infor- 
mation. As much of that, said he, as you please, 
and as little correction. Do you know, said I, 
what Hieronymus Rhodius has allotted for the 
summum bonum ? I know, said Torquatus, he 
resolves it into nihil dolere, mere indolence. And 
what is his opinion as to pleasure ? That it is not 

H 



50 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

a thing to be desired for its own sake. It seems 
then, said I, he puts a distinction between pleasure 
and indolence ! He does so, said he, and against 
all reason, as is clear from what I formerly ob- 
served to you, that the removal of all uneasiness is 
the consummation of all pleasure. As for the 
effect of indolence I shall examine, said I, what it 
is in the sequal. Meantime, I assure myself you 
cannot be so perverse as to deny there is a differ* 
ence in the result between actual pleasure and 
bare indolence. I assure you, said he, I must be 
so perverse, and am confident my cause is good. 
Is it a pleasure to drink when we are thirsty? No 
doubt on it* Is it the same pleasure that follows 
when our thirst is quenched? Not the s&me species 
of pleasure. The latter is a still or stable pleasure ; 
the former an active or operative one. But if, said 
I, they so little resemble one another, why do you 
confound them ? Have I, said he, so lately told 
you to so little purpose, that pleasure arising from 
the absence of pain admits of variety, though not 
of intension ? I have not forgot it, said I, and 
you spoke good Latin when you told me so, but 
not clear sense. Varietas is a Latin word properly 
signifying a diversity of colours, though taking it in 
a larger acceptation, we adapt it to a diversity or 
multiplicity of peculiarities in any thing else. Thus 
we say a poem full of variety, an oration full of 
variety, and variety in a mans manners or fortune; 
and variety of pleasure too, that is, as there hap- 



BOOK THE SEC'OND. 51 

pens to be a variety of objects and motives that 
occasion different pleasures. Had you spoke of 
such a variety as this, I had understood you %vith 
as little help as I understand my own meaning; 
but when you are pleased to teach us, first, that a 
state of mdolency is the very uttermost perfection 
of pleasure ; secondly, that the approximation of 
things operating agreeably upon our senses is an 
active or fermenting pleasure begetting a variety 
of pleasures ; and yet that your pleasure of indolence 
admits of no intension or improvement, I am as 
much at a loss for a notion of what you mean by 
your variety, as for a reason, why indolence must 
have the name of pleasure. Gan you imagine a 
greater blessing, said he, than to be free from all 
manner of pain or trouble? For the present, sup- 
pose it, said I ; will it follow that pleasure and indo- 
lence are one and the same thing? Certainly indo- 
lence is not only a pleasure, said he, but an unpa- 
ralelled one too. If you are resolved, said I, that 
it shall be the summum bonum, your unparalclled 
pleasure, why will you not stick by it sincerely, 
stoutly, and faithfully ? And why will nothing satisfy 
you, unless pleasure be received into the college of 
virtues, that is, a common prostitute into a fainiliu-r 
rity with ladies of reputation and honour? The 
reason is plain, because when she is by herself she 
is loathsome and scandalous ; and all the apology 
you can make for her is to cry, You do not appre- 
hend Epicuru^s meaning when he mentions her! 



52 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS, 

I have myself been frequently admonished thuf. 
But I must own, such is the affront, that as little 
apt as I am to grow warm in a dispute, I cannot 
forbear sometimes expressing my resentments when 
I am told so. Hard luck indeed ! the dance is to 
be taught what tJ&owj signifies in Greek, and wluptas 
in Latin ! Which of the tongues is it that I am 
a perfect stranger to? Or why cannot I under- 
stand what the word pleasure imports, as well as 
every body that, forsooth ! will commence Epicu- 
rean? Especially in regard it is a celebrated maxim 
of your professors, that philosophy requires not a 
foundation of learning. Accordingly as the old 
Romans took Cincinnatus from the plough and 
made him dictator ', just so you travel to Greece for 
your worthies, and let them be but honest fel- 
lows, yon care not how little they are taught or 
polished. Dull Cicero ! not to comprehend Epi- 
curus's dictates half so well as they ; though I am 
very sure and positive that the words ijSow] and 
voluptas (pleasure) stand for the same idea. We 
are ever and anon at a loss for want of a Latin 
word that will exactly answer in signification to a 
Greek one; but for the present occasion there is 
not a word in all our language more expressive of 
the propriety of its Greek than the word wluptas ; 
nor a Roman that is tolerably acquainted with his 
mother-tongue, but knows that wluptas implies 
two things , a serenity or satisfaction in the mind, 
and the activity of any gay sensations in the body* 



BOOK THE SECOND. 55 

Therefore Trabeas we see, makes use of the word 
Icetitia where he is speaking of the same excess of 
pleasure that Caecilianus represents by omnibus 
Icetitiis Ice turn esse, tumbling in an ocean of delight. 
Note by the way, that the stoics take the word al- 
ways in an ill sense, ascribing a viciousness even 
to pleasure of the mind, and thus denning it, plea- 
sure of mind is a fantastical elevation grounded 
upon a dream of the presence of a substantial good. 
When the word has a reference to the body, it is 
not properly the same as IcEtitia or gaudium (joy,) 
but primarily, and in the strictness of the Latin 
idiom it stands for the influence and impressions of 
any delight upon our senses. Though it is true 
the word jucunditas, a delicious perception, may be 
made metaphorically and improperly to respect 
the mind, jucundum being derived from juvare, a 
term equally significative, whether accommodated 
to the concerns of the mind or of the body. 
Though not so improperly neither, sir, as that we 
must explode a medium between all joy and all 
grief; between 

Tanta lastitia auctus sum, &c. 

() ! 'tis a dangerous joy, my soul gives way ! 

And, 

Nunc demum mihi animus ardet, 

A conflagration wars about my heart. 

for what think you of (to the tune of neither the 
first nor the last) 



54 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

Quanquam haec inter nos, &c. 

It matters not how long or how lately we have been 
acquainted, neighbour 

There is a middle condition between an affluence of 
pleasure and an extremity of pain, and that is, 
when we are affected by neither. What say you now ? 
Can you dispense yet with my returning to my 
school-dame, and my school-master f If not, do me 
the justice to examine whether it is for want of a 
competent knowledge of the Greek, that I do not 
understand Epicurus, or for want of perspicuity in 
Epicurus, that his meaning is absolutely unintelli- 
gible. A fault which was never excused but in 
two cases ; either when it was designed, as Hera- 
clitus affected intricacies in his natural philosophy, 
and so got himself the surname of obscure ; or else 
when our subject-matter is abstruse, though not our 
manner of explication, as in the instance of Plato's 
Timaeus. Now Epicurus, unless I much mistake 
him, is neither unwilling to signify his meaning 
clearly, nor argues about any physical riddle or ma* 
fhematical subtilty, but a familiar manageable 
common-place* You yourselves do not suppose us 
ignorant of the nature of pleasure ; no, but of E* 
picurus's notion of it : and that supposition will 
justify the inference, that although we are thorough* 
ly instructed in the signification of the word pleasure, 
he would not use it in that sense, but affix to it a, 
new and singular one of his own. If he is agreed 
with Hieronymus, and places the summum bonum 



BOOK THE SECOND. 56 

in an easy, unmolested state of life, why will he 
not speak out as plain as the other, abrogate the 
name of pleasure, and adhere to vacuitas doloris, 
freedom from disturbance? Or if he will have 
pleasure for his summum bonum, I mean his plea- 
sure of indolence or unact'voe pleasure, let him not 
leave the other in the lurch, his dear enchantress 
which bears the name of operative pleasure, or 
pleasure in motu. Why is he so concerned to per- 
suade everv mortal man out of the consciousness 

ml 

of his own nature, and to convince him in spite 
of his senses that indolence and pleasure, are the 
very same thing ? It is hard, let me tell you, Toi- 
quatus, that all our faculties must be stormed at 
this rate, and our apprehensions rilled of the 
plainest and the most universal meanings. Is it 
not obvious and uncontrovertible that we are all 
subject to a threefold variety of circumstances, ei- 
ther actual pleasure, or actual pain, or mere com- 
posedness, which is the company s condition? One 
man receives a refreshment upon eating, another a 
violence of torment upon the rack, but nobody 
much, I think, of one or the other in sitting still. 
Do you not, as we converse, take notice how many 
thousands of living arguments of a state of indiffer- 
ence move this way and that way about us ? But 
for all that, said Torquatus, I must abide by it, 
that it is not only a pleasure, but the very quint- 
essence of pleasure not to be in pain. So that, 
answered I, my skinker perceives himself as agree- 



56 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

ably affected in filling me out a glass when he has 
no inclination to drink, as I can do, for my life, when 
I am taking it off to quench my drought. Let me 
pray you, said he, no more of your interrogatories 
and expostulations. I thought I had provided 
against your Socratical snares in & preliminary arti- 
cle. Are you then, said I, rather for a rhetorical 
than any logical methods of disputation ? For, both, 
said he, unless you will affirm that the philoso- 
phers have not so good a claim as the orators to 
the process of discoursing at length. Aristotle, 
said I, and after him Zeno the stoic, distributed 
the energies of speech into two kinds, the rhetorical 
and the logical. The first are compared by Zeno 
to the hand of a man, expanded, because an ora- 
tor s business is to amplify and expatiate ; the lat- 
ter to the hand clenched, because a philosopher's 
business is to say as much in as few words as he 
can. But in compliance with your desire, I will 
try to philosophise in the vein of a rhetorician, 
that is of a philosophising for, as for our forensic 
oratory, it will of necessity be flat and jejune, be- 
cause it obliges us to suit our measures to vulgar un- 
derstandings. Not that by thus complying I 
would countenance Epicurus's contempt of logic, 
a science that brings home the full benefit of all 
our simple conceptions, and disposes aright as well 
the discursive faculty as the judgment, and by 
means whereof Epicurus might have kept himself 
upon his legs, had he but condescended to the dull 



BOOK THE SECOXD. 57 

discipline of distinguishing ; at least in the parti- 
cular before us. Pleasure, you assert, is the sum- 
mum bonum ; the next thing to be looked into, is, 
What is pleasure, and this is the ready way to .set 
clear the full sense of the question. Had Epicurus 
troubled himself to explain what pleasure is, he 
had never been so bewildered. For either he must 
have stuck to Aristippus's pleasure, sensual, soft, 
and effeminate, that which our cattle, if they could 
speak, would call pleasure ; or if he would have 
opposed his own proprieties to the sense and lan- 
guage of all Greece beside, the braze Achccan, 
Argive, attic youths, omnes danai, &c. (as the 
anapazstic has it,) then he must have rejected 
Aristippus, and appropriated the name of pleasure 
to indolence. Or if he intended, as he did, to pa- 
tronise both, he would have given us them together 
in the terms of indolence joined with actual pleasure 
for the two ultimate goods. And for this he mi edit 
have pleaded several renowned precedents among 
the philosophers, as Aristotle for one, who consti- 
tutes his summum bonum of two parts, a virtuous 
life with an entire prosperity. For the same 
purpose Callipho couples honesty and pleasure ; 
Diodorus, honesty and indolence; and Epicurus 
had no more to do than to yoke together that which 
is the modern opinion of Hieronymus with the 
ancient opinion of Aristippus, though their distinct 
hypotheses naturally carried them to the choice of 
distinct moral ends. I may venture to say they 

i 



58 CICERO OF MORAL EXD&. 

understood Greek full as well as Epicurus ; arid 
yet Aristippus never sprinkles his summom bcmim 
of pleasure with indolence. Neither does Hiero- 
nymus at any time miscal his summum benum of 
indolence by the name of pleasure, as even denying 
that things of a desirable nature are effective of 
pleasure; Do not mistake yourself; to be zvithout 
pain and to be under the sense of pleasure, are not 
only two distinct modes of expression, but two 
distinct things* And yet, as if it were not enough 
to make these tw T o distinct modes convertible, which 
is venial in comparison with the other, you must 
be straining at impossibilities and identifying the 
distant natures of the things themselves. If Epi- 
curus thought good to pitch upon both pleasure 
and indolence, he should, as he does, but still so 
as to jumble them into one by confounding the 
names, have retained both alike for a summum 
bonum. There are many passages in him I could 
cite where he extols pleasure, properly so called, 
and very modestly professes in a place where he is 
handling the subject of summum bonum-, that he 
cannot imagine what can pass for good, beside the 
aristippic species of pleasure. In another book 
(judge yourself, Torquatus> whether I translate his 
words unfairly, for I am going to quote one of his 
weighty, demonstrative periods, his oracles of wis- 
dom, as they are called, the xvgloa ho{;ai, the con- 
stant pole-stars, which yourself and the rest of 
your fraternity consult and sail by in pursuit of 



BOOK THE SECOND. 59 

happiness) the same author thus declares himself, 
I should have nothing at all to object against lux- 
ury, if the pleasures of it could disengage the mind 
of man from all dread of the gods, of death, and 
of pain, and implied the proper scope and end of 
our appetites, for thus refined they would make 
up the total of human happiness, and become q, 
charm against the evils of pain or sorrow. But 
does Epicurus really talk at this rate? said Triarius 
to Torquatus, for he could no longer contain him- 
self, and though he knew well enough how the case 
really stood, he had a mind to bring Torquatus to 
confession. But Torquatus took him up with a 
ready assurance, owned the charge, and told us 
we did not relish the sense of Epicurus's words 
rightly. And it is impossible I should, said I, so 
long as he says one thing and means another, 
However, here I fully comprehend the drift of 
what he asserts, and the absurdity too. A luxu- 
rious fellow does not deserve to be discommended, 
provided he be but a wise man! It is pity he 
did not tell us that neither would a parricide de- 
serve a reproof, if it were not for his own avarice 
and his dread of the gods, of death, and of pain ! 
To what purpose does our great philosopher com- 
pound with his gluttons, or offer at such a wild 
supposition as the existence of a luxurious person 
that is a stranger to those other mistakes and vices, 
which if he had not entertained, he might have 
been dispensed with for his luxury? Would not 



60 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

himself have rebuked a luxurious man for such a 
blind pursuit of confused pleasures, if it were but 
in behalf of the sovereign pleasure of mere indo- 
lence? Besides too, there are sots in the world 
that make no conscience of scrambling for the 
sacrifices upon the altars, and brave death every 
dav with a 

Mihi sex menses, &c. 

Let me but lead a jolly life mean while, 

And lay me seven months hence upon the fatal pile. 

It may be against pain Epicurus has furnished 
their snush-boxes with his nostrum, si gravis, 
brevis: si longus, levis; if exquisite, short, and 
moderate, if long. Be it so : yet am I puzzled 
how to conceive such a thins; as a mortal abandoned 
to luxury, and yet abridging his appetites! Why 
then should Epicurus give himself the trouble of 
informing us, that truly he has no exceptions 
against a luxurious man, provided he lays a limi- 
tation upon his appetites? which is as much as 
to say in other words, I have no exceptions against 
a sot, but that he is a sot ; nor, in general, against 
a vicious man, if he were but virtuous. Observe 
the sage's austerity ! He has no quarrel, not he, 
against luxury considered in itself! And in good 
truth, Torquatus, if pleasure be the summum bonum, 
the man is in the right. Never hope to bring him 
off with your imagery of a club of wretches vomit- 
ing over the punch-bowl, and afterwards carried 



BOOK THE SECOND. 6l 

to bed by the drawers in order to be capacitated 
for renewing the debauch upon a foundation of 
crudities the next morning. Nobody supposes 
the brutes of this predicament, who, perhaps never 
got sober enough to know, as they say, when it is 
day or night, until after a revolution of some years, 
they have consumed the very means of subsistence ; 
nobody supposes these prodigies have much enjoy- 
ment of their lives. Your men of delicacy, that 
employ all the noted cooks, bakers, fishmongers, 
and poulterers they can hear of, to furnish their 
table with curiosities as agreeable as may be pro- 
cured to stomach and palate; whose wines, as 
Lucilius has it, 

Cascading from a mighty goblet flow, 
Without or skinny tang, or dash of snow : 
Their business assignations, balls, &c. 

— not to forget the womanish valets that wait upon 
them, and, conformable to all the rest, their clothes, 
their plate, and the stateliness of their halls and 
parlours. Defile these off the account, cries 
Epicurus, and a fig for any other good whatsoever; 
and yet, say I, the sensualist with all these appur- 
tenances, though according to one meaning he 
lives well, vet in no sense can live happily. Nor 
think that pleasure, because it is not the sumrnum 
bonum, is not pleasure. It was rot an insensibility. 
but a contempt of the sweetness of pleasure that 
got Loelius, pupil in his youth to Diogenes the 



62 CICfcliO OF MORAL ENDS. 

stoic, afterwards to Pana?tius,,the character of a 
zvisc man. lie had the sense of tasting as well as 
other people ; but then he had the sense of a phi- 
losopher too. Remember O lapathe, ut jactere,§c. 

Be proud, ye dock-leaves, be for ever proud; 
When Lailius had you on his plate, aloud. 
Lcelius the great, the wise, impartial rage 
Discharged upon the gluttons o' the age, 
Gallonius, Publius, poor unhappy men, 
That ev'ry day devour as much as ten, 
And mortgage farms to treat a fool with fish, 
Yet ne'er could get a dinner worth a wish ! 

The declaimer, who made no account of -pleasure, 
has not the confidence to deny Gallonius was 
pleased with his meals ; but yet he is positive, you 
see, that Gallonius, or any other slave to pleasure, 
never dined well. Here we have the separate interests 
of pleasure and bonum very gravely and judiciously 
insisted on, and may learn from the distinction, 
that although whosoever dines well, dines to his own 
satisfaction, yet it will not hold convertibly, that 
he that dines to his own satisfaction, dines well. As 
for example; Laclius used to dine well, that is, as 
Lucilius explains it, cocto, condito, upon ordinary 
fare. His principal dish was sermo bonus, profit- 
able discourse. And thus he made up a dinner, 
si quer'i libenter, much to his own satisfaction. . 
He knew no other end in eating, but soberly to 
satisfy the cravings of nature. He had good rea- 
son therefore to affirm, as he did, that notwith^ 
standing Gallonius might like his victuals, well 



BOOK THE SECOND. 63 

filnugb, yet the poor man, with all the pains and 
expenses he was at, had never the good fortune 
once iu his life to eat well, that is, to be plain, that 
he never eat frugally, temperately, and as he 
ought to have eaten, but brutishly, indulgingly, 
and in all respects as he ought not to have eaten. 
It was the lusciousness of the satisfaction that La> 
lius loathed: upon any other consideration he had 
scarce admired his doek- leaves above a Gallonian 
jish-dinner. For why ? It is not to%e suffered, thought 
he, tlmi pleasure shall usurp the title of 4ummum 
honum. And indeed to oive it that title is no bet- 

o 

ter than high-treason as well in word as mj'act a- 
gainst virtue and common honesty. To be short, 
if it is not our summum honum at dinner, it is 
strange how it comes to be the summum bonum of our 
lives. In the next place, how untowardly has your 
philosopher distributed our inclinations and desires 
into three sorts, such as are both natural and neces- 
sary ; such as are natural, but not necessary, and 
■such as are neither natural nor necessary ? What 
can be less artificial than this division ? Which, 
whereas it should have no more than two, is 
branched into three members. This is drawing 
and quartering of comprehensive terms instead of 
dividing them. It is a lamentable oversight in 
settling a division to clap inferior and superior 
kinds together. Had he first divided our desires 
into natural and unreasonable ; and the natural 
again into necessary and unnecessary, he had gone 



64 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

the right way to work. However, if he will but 
reason as he should do, we will not fall out with 
him for the confusedness of his method, because 
he professes and vindicates inaccuracy and negli- 
gence. Accordingly, for once i will do violence 
to my judgment, and give a philosopher leave to 
read mankind a lecture Lbout limitinsj their desires. 
What? Restrain our desires? (I mean our irre- 
gular ones according to the proper signification of 
the word cupiditates) No : totally suppress and 
exterminate them, unless you will shew me. a man 
of a covetous temper, just as covetous as he ought 
to be, or a sort of adulterers and gluttons that 
keep within bounds. As if it were pity to treat 
our depravities in so cruel a manner, but we must 
descend forsooth ! to terms of accommodation with 
our vices ! incomparable philosophy this ! Not 
but that I am as well pleased with the substance 
and import of the division, as I am offended at the 
form and dress he has given it. It were advisable 
to couch the desideria natural, the common solicita- 
tions of our constitution under a more reputable 
word than cupiditas, which should have been re- 
served for his titles of avarice, intemperance, and 
the like enormous habits, and among them received 
its condemnation. But alas ! these are liberties 
which lie makes a common practice of taking. 
Neither will I censure him upon that score, be- 
cause he had been modest in obtruding his doc- 
trines upon us, his philosophic majesty must have 



BOOK THE SECOND, 65 

lessened his own prerogative, which rather than he 
will do, after he has once taken voluptas (sensual 
pleasure) into his especial favour and protection, 
in the sense which all mankind has imposed upon 
that word : whatever difficulties hamper him, he 
will not desert her; nay, although he must utterly 
overthrow the regalia of conscience, and the throne 
being declared vacant, place in it voluptas to play 
her own arbitrary game. But because he found 
his rational, and would ever and anon be sallying 
out in blushes upon his animal part, he had al- 
ways that other proposition to retire to in his con- 
fusion, that no additions can be made to the plea- 
sure of indolence. But what if indolence be not a 
term equivalent to mluptas ? Why the philoso- 
pher is not concerned about the precise sig- 
nification of the terms. But what if the things 
differ widely from one another? And suppose 
(for although the Epicureans are very nice and 
untractable, yet there are millions of men that 
may be won with ease to yield almost an assent to 
any thing) suppose I should frame an argument to 
this effect, If indolence be the greatest of pleasures ', 
then is the absence of pleasure the greatest of 
pains ? Will it not hold ? No, because we may 
not oppose the absence of pleasure but a pr-iv at ion 
of pain to pain. However this is not obvious, and 
the darkness of the distinction exposes the absur- 
dity of his retaining that other pleasure, which if 
denied him, he declares be knows not what deserves 

K 



66 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

to be deemed our good. And it is this pleasure, 
for which we are beholden to our palates and our 
ears (not to mention in regard to good manners 
and modesty some other organs of it) that is the 
ruling favourite, the singular and sole good, which 
our demure and rigorous philosopher had ever any 
notion of, and yet while he vacates that pleasure 
under the raptures of inclo lence> he has most unad- 
visedly contradicted himself, and made that sole 
good of his to be not so much as a tiling valuable 
or desirable. And in all these repugnancies has 
he tangled himself, purely because he thought it 
beneath him. to meddle with definitions, divisions, 
logic, grammar, or language. By this time you 
may be sensible how wise he was in his contri- 
vances. He assumes the supposition of two plea- 
sures, one his vcluptas in motu, his excited pleasure, 
the other a new pleasure which nobody ever heard 
of before, and he melts down both at last into one 
and the same. The first of these, his delicious 
double-refined pleasure you shall have him some- 
times decrying at the rate of Manius Curius him- 
self; and celebrating it at other times as his indi- 
vidual bonum or good, a position to which rather 
the public censor s than any private philosopher's 
animadversions are due, as bein^ not half so bad 
a solecism in point of grammar, as in point of 
morality. Only excesses and solicitudes must not 
go along wiih luxury; or else he has no manner 
of complaint against it. I confess this is one way 



BOOK THE SECOND. 6*7 

to strengthen his party, when whoever will be a 
thorough- paced voluptuary is to commence first a 
philosopher of the Epicurean stamp. Notwith- 
standing all this we have received our directions 
to look for the origin of summum bonum in the 
nests and nurseries of animals, for that the notices 
they suggest about good and evil before their na- 
tural powers have taken a wrong bias, may best 
determine us ; and these are no sooner born, but 
they pursue and espouse pleasure as a good, and 
on the otheif hand eschew pain as an evil. This is 
one of your positions, and this the exact sense of 
it as you have worded it. But though the position 
is one, the faults of it are many. For I beseech 
you, sir, whether is it of the two pleasures, the still 
and stable, or the active and operative (in the style 
made sacred by Epicurus) by which an infant 
amidst his moans is to distinguish for us between 
good and evil? If by the still and stable, we are 
as ready to grant as you can wish, that nature con- 
sults for and enforces her own preservation. If 
by the active and operative, as you conceive, this 
principle will recommend to mankind the rankest 
and the most dishonest pleasures. Besides that 
your new-born animal does not enter upon life 
with so much as your transcendent pleasure of 
indolence. Neither does Epicurus himself appeal 
to his brats and his brutes, as much as he takes 
them for the mirrors and dictionaries of nature, to 
prove that according to nature we are incited to 



68 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

pursue the pleasure of indolence, the influence 
whereof has not force enough to rouse and irritate 
the appetite. And the same ohjection will equally 
affect Hieronymus. For it is the pleasure which 
sooths and solaces the sense, that actuates and 
excites. And this is the reason why Epicurus 
advances the instance aforesaid to shew that we 
are prompted by nature to pursue, not the dormant 
pleasure of indolence, but that cogent and active 
one that gives life to all the motions of little chil- 
dren and irrational animals. And what now can 
savour of absurdity more than that, after he has 
admonished us of nature's early impulses to one 
sort of pleasure, he should constitute another for 
the summum bonum ? Then as for the suffrage 
of brutes, I lay no stress upon it, for although their 
authority be not incompetent upon the score of 
depravities, yet it is certainly so upon the score 
of imperfections. They are not capable of enter- 
taining any wrong persuasions, and therefore in- 
capable of intimating any right. It is one thing 
to bend a stick till you make it stand awry ; and 
another thing when it grows crooked. Again ; 
your infant is not instigated by the force of any 
innate principle to a pursuit of pleasure, but to a 
love of its own being, and a care of its own preser- 
vation ; it being natural for every living creature 
to wish well to itself, and every part of itself. It is 
primarily fond of the body and soul, which make 
up the whole of it, and proportionably of the powers 



BOOK THE SECOND. 69 

and parts of each. For there are certain privileges 
and advantages of prime account which appertain 
both to the body and the mind. And when we 
have passed a judgment upon these, we come to 
observe that it is consonant to the measures of 
nature to further those interests which herself has 
principally regarded, and to protest against the 
contrary. Whether pleasure be one of those pri- 
ma naturalia or not, is much disputed. But that 
it is the only one, scarce any body, I should think, 
could have the hardiness to maintain, that had not 
lost the use of his limbs, five senses, and under- 
standing, and never knew what it is to have a 
sound body and a hale constitution. Take notice 
withal, that the present article is the grand hinge 
upon which the whole rationale of the disquisition 
about the nature of good and evil turns. The old 
academics and peripatetics have pronounced it the 
summum bonum, secundum naturam vivere> a life 
unsullied zvith any thing that is disagreeable io our 
nature; or in other words, a life of virtue, not 
destitute of the prima naturalia. Callipho required 
no additions to virtue but pleasure ; Diodorus none 
but indolence. After these came Aristippus's 
simplex voluntas, pleasure by itself ; and the stoics 
consentire natural, entire submission and conformity 
to the establishments of nature, which they resolve 
into living virtuously, or as a man of honour and 
honesty is bound to live, and which they explain 
by a life, the perfection whereof is to be thoroughly 



70 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

acquainted with the condition and circumstances of 
those things which occur in nature, to make choice 
of the measures which she prescribes; and not to 
venture upon the contrary for the world. So then, 
as there are three hypotheses of moral ends, ex- 
cluding honest as> honesty and virtue, that of Ari- 
stippus and Epicurus, that of Hieronymus, and that 
of Carneades; so there are ihree hypotheses which 
link honest as and something accessional together, 
as those of Poiemo, Callipho, and Diodorus ; be- 
sides which there is that of Zeno in favour of pure 
and abstracted honesty, or moral decorum ; not to 
mention the obsolete, abandoned schemes of Pyrrho, 
Aristo, and Herillus. Among these Aristippus, 
Hieronymus, Carneades, &c. had the discretion to 
contrive, every man for himself, that his own sys- 
tem should be all of a piece, whether it were Ari- 
stippus's pleasure, Hieronymus's indolence, Carnea- 
des's frui principiis naturalibus, that we should 
make the most we can of all principles in nature 
whatsoever ; or whether it were any one of them 
beside. But unfortunate Epicurus, when he had 
engaged himself at first in behalf of pleasure, must 
be understood either to mean Aristippus's pleasure, 
and then he ought to have been true to Aristippus's 
mmmum bonum ; or else Hieronymus's; but how 
can that be ? when it is plain his first essay was in 
recommendation of the Aristippean pleasure. As 
unadvisedly has* he empowered his senses to deter- 
mine him about the goodness of pleasure, and the 



BOOK THE SECOND. 71 

evil of pain. This is giving them a larger commission 
than the law vouchsafes to any man in the company. 
We are allowed to judge or arbitrate in a private ca- 
pacity ; but may not assume to ourselves the de- 
termination of any matters which lie beyond our pro- 
per cognizance. As it would be trilling and ridi- 
culous for a judge upon the bench, when he has pro- 
nounced the sentence, to conclude with a si quid 
mcijudicii est, if my judgment avails any thing. 
And in case Epicurus's senses were not, and could 
not be sufficiently authorized, such a proviso stands 
them in as little stead ; for it will not render the 
decision, I hope, ever the more valid, if his senses 
have sometime or other been pleased to adjudge 
that which was sweet to be hitter, that which was 
smooth to be rough, that which was nigh to be 
afar-off, that which stood still to be in motion, and 
that which was four-square to be round, Let 
right reason therefore interpose her authority in 
the decision, and how will she proceed? With a 
nice regard, no doubt, to the counsels of wisdom, 
as that is truely defined a knowledge extending to 
things as well divine as human ; and with as pre- 
cise a deference to virtues of all denominations, 
which notwithstanding you treat as no better than 
so many pimps and prentices to your pleasures, 
right reason proclaims them so many empresses and 
heroines ; and, as their herald, has notified aloud in 
defiance to pleasure, that instead of its having any 
title to the character of the summum bonum, after 



72 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

which we are enquiring, it is altogether unworthy 
to be the colleague of honesty and virtue. Neither 
is poor indolence in a better taking ; nor yet the 
hypothesis of Carneades, nor those which take in 
pleasure or indolence into the substance of summum 
bonum, or shut honesty or virtue out of it. So 
.that there are now no more than two behind, and 
these to be discussed and weighed with all imagin- 
able diligence and advertency ; for it must either be 
concluded that bonum and malum, good and evil, 
are neither more nor less than honestum and turpe, 
what is honest, and what is not ; and as for any 
collateral or supernumerary advantages, that they 
are not at all to be minded ■; or however as things 
barely eligible or unacceptable ; not as things truly 
and simply desirable or detestable : or else right 
reason will assign the pre-eminence to that account 
of summum bonum which comprehends all the ex- 
cellencies and ornaments of honesty and virtue, 
and all the perfections of a life regulated and re- 
fined according to the model and scheme of na- 
ture. And toward this determination right reason 
will make the happier advances, if she satisfies 
herself in the first place whether the controversy 
relating to these conclusions be real or only verbal. 
Pursuant therefore to the admonishments of so 
good a directress, I design to take that course, re- 
solving to contract the dispute into as narrow a 
compass as I can, and to deny a place in the pro- 
vince of philosophy to all those uncomplex ideas of 



J500K THE SECOND. 73 

summum bonum, which do not include virtue. And 
first, it was a gross and foggy dulness of apprehen- 
sion in Aristippus and the Cyrenaic.s, when they 
had the impudence to carve themselves a summum 
bonum, not out of so despicable a nullity as inch- 
knee, but out of those busy pleasures which dally 
with our senses ; to miss of what Aristotle has re- 
marked, that man is a kind of mortal deity, and 
that the ends where unto he is born, are observation 
and action, as a horse to racing, an ox to ploughing^ 
&jinder to beating ; nay, contrariwise to maintain 
so wild and unaccountable a doctrine, as that man 
with all his natural dignities and eminences re- 
ceived his existence for the same ignoble ends as 
baboons and sioines received theirs, to indulge 
themselves in the fulsome satisfactions of eatings 
drinking, and venery. This bill I am obliged to 
file against Aristippus, though, to do him justice, 
he has dealt more ingenuously by us than you, and 
owns he means the same that the rest of mankind 
mean by the volupt as ot pleasure which he has en- 
titled sovereign and sole. Not that this palliates 
the ofFensiveness of his error, the very structure of 
our bodies, as well as the excellence and majesty 
of our rational faculties demonstrating that the en- 
joyment of pleasures cannot possibly be the ge- 
nuine end of our existence. liieronytnus's sum- 
mum bonum of indolence, and yours too upon occa- 
sion, or rather without occasion, deserves as little 
to be regarded. For it is no consequence, that 

L 



74 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

because pain is an evil, therefore we cannot but be 
sufficiently happy when the evil of pain is away. 
That apophthegm of Ennius we will allow in him 
as a poet, nimium boni est cut, nihil est mali ; 



'Tis an excess 

Of pleasure not to feel uneasiness. 

But we, as philosophers, must measure our felicity, 
not by the absence of evil, but by the acquisition of 
real good, and may expect to compass it, not upon 
the footing of Aristippus's oscitancy and voluptu- 
ousness, nor of Hieronymus's negative of indolence, 
but by a studious vigilance, and an industrious 
application. The summum bonum of Carneades 
falls under the stroak of the same censure and dis- 
proof. Indeed it was not from the opinion which 
he had of it himself that he was moved to propose 
it, but merely that he might mortify the stoics, 
against whom he was implacable. This however 
must be said for it, that in consort and conjunction 
with virtue, it might appear plausibly enough to 
take in the entire latitude cf human happiness, and 
reach up to the tenor of the present question. Nor 
may we shew half the same tenderness and favour 
toward any of the other complex summum-bonums 
as virtue coupled with pleasure, her greatest, nui- 
sance, or with indolence, which has in it so little 
of summum bonum, that it is only the bare negation 
of an evil. I cannot imagine what some philoso- 
phers intend by thus lessening and derogating 



BOOK THE SECON». 75 

from the character of virtue. They will not stop 
at the demand of something to boot with her, but 
the allotments required must be the most unbe- 
seeming too, and those only of a few scanty parti- 
culars, instead of the whole set of the prima natu- 
ralia ; as Aristo and Pyrrho, for their part, set so 
little by the prima naturalia, that they would by 
all means make us believe, there is not an ace to 
choose between a state of perfect health, and a 
most uncomfortable habit of body. And therefore 
nobody has, for a long time, thought it worth while 
to wrangle with them. Rather than virtue should 
not be the most complete and comprehensive good, 
they took away the liberty of comparison and option, 
and consequently the seminal principle out of 
which it should emerge, and the aliment by which 
it should sustain itself. Herillus was for shutting 
up every other good in the good of science. But 
as this, it is evident, is not our greatest good, so 
neither does it infer a regularity in our practices 
and manners. Upon this account Herillus has 
long since shared the same fate with the two former ; 
for nobody has look him to task after Chrysippus. 
The academics, you know, will aver nothing cate- 
gorically, but as in despair of ever grasping any 
absolute certainty, take up with whatever looks the 
most probable ; and therefore we can form no 
judgment in relation to them. Epicurus makes 
his entrance in the rear, and creates us the more 
trouble, first, because he has brought a bed of more 



76 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

than one kind of pleasure ; and, secondly, because 
both himself and his philosophy had the good for- 
tune to make themselves at first a great many 
friends, and to live in as numerous a succession of 
vindicators ; nay, however it comes about, the 
general applause of the multitude, which is a 
very suspicious sign of the contrary being deserved, 
some of these people, whom it is our duty to con- 
fute, as we tender the interests of virtue, honour, 
and merit, pretend to convert into a demonstrative 
argument. Thus I have drove the pretences of 
all the other philosophers out of the field, and the 
two combatants that remain, are, it should seem, 
not I and Torquatus, but virtue and pleasure, 
Chrysippus, a man of a mighty reach, and an assi- 
duity proportionable, has led the way, and cast the 
whole dispute about the nature of summum bonum, 
upon the comparison that lies between those two. 
And I am so far of his mind, that I conceive I have 
cut the throat of Epicurus's cause so soon as I can 
make out any one honestum, or principle of virtue, 
to be a thing desirable for its own sake, and by 
virtue of its own influence. Having therefore first 
defined and stated the true notion and the proper 
grounds of this honestum, with a seasonable brevity, I 
shall proceed, sir, to unravel all thatyou have offered, 
and hope, as you see cause, you will make good 
the omissions of a defective memory. Honestum, 
or every honourable, ingenuous, commendable 



principle, is 



that which challenges our esteem and 



&: 



BOOK THE SECOND. 77 

best affections upon the merit of its own intrinsic 
worth a fid excellence, exclusively of any prospect of 
profit or compensation. Here, I conceive, we have 
the rough-draft and out -lines of honest um ; but he 
that is disposed to contemplate the natural symme- 
try and features of it, must look into conscience, 
and survey the original presenting itself in the 
intentions, purposes, and practices of such worthy 
persons, as overlooking all the invitations of ad- 
vantage and interest are devoted to the accom- 
plishing of great and glorious enterprises, purely 
upon the evidence of their suitableness to rational 
faculties and a generous disposition. For among 
many ether properties wherein a man differs from 
a brute, the most conspicuous one is this, that he 
is endowed with rational abilities , has a large 
capacity of soul, a quick and lively apprehension, 
and such a force of sagacity and thought as to 
collect and observe diversity of ideas at one act, and 
in one view, by the force of which powers he finds 
out causes and consequences, and the relative dis- 
agreements and correspondences of things with 
things. We anticipate futurities and connect them 
with the present juncture, and predetermine our- 
selves about the general circumstances and events 
of life. The further effect of all this is a kind of 
inclination in one man to another, and a mutual 
communication of desires, notions, and interests, 
and according to the order of nature, these alliances 
first obtain among the several relations of the same 



78 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

family; next among the members of the same 
civil community ; and lastly among the several 
parties of the universal society of mankind. 
Hence Plaio in one of his Epistles takes occasion 
to admonish Architas, that the end of his coming 
into the zvorld was to he serviceable to his country, 
and his friends, for that he was intitled to a very 
small portion of himself and his own actions. And 
in regard we are born with a very vehement pro- 
pensity to acquire the knowledge of truth, as is 
evident from that eagerness of attention, with which 
sometimes when we have nothing else to do, we 
look up to the heavenly bodies, and gaze at the 
places and the motions of them ; this principle by 
degrees kindles in the mind a veneration and fond- 
ness for all truths in general, especially all funda- 
mental, stanch, and solid truths, and as great an 
aversion to illusions, falsities, and fallacies, as par- 
ticularly to frauds, perjuries, malice and injustice. 
But there is yet a higher proficiency of human rea- 
son, and that is, an august and awful resoluteness, 
that fixes us in an absolute command of ourselves, 
and as if it were not enough to render disappoint- 
ments and misfortunes tolerable, makes them 
scarce perceivable ; that erects and exalts the soul, 
ensures it against all the power of fear, or any 
other impressions whatsoever. By this time we 
have a three-fold division of honest um : the fourth 
and last to be superinduced upon the three former 
species , and no less amiable and engaging, respects 



BOOK THE SECOND. 73 

order and a regulation of our behaviour: for the 
very shape and lineaments of our bodies are as mo- 
nitors to mind us of the dignity of our nature, and 
caution us against licentious indecencies in word 
or action. And these intimations, at least those 
motives concurring which arise out of the three 
precedent kinds of honest um, restrain us from doing 
any thing rash and extravagant, and make us be- 
ware of uttering or attempting whatever may give 
offence, occasion mischief, or argue a littleness and 
poverty of spirit. Behold the full dimensions and 
proportions of our honest as (our principle of ho- 
nour, honesty and virtue ! ) and how they comprise 
the four virtues which yourself, sir, so mainly in- 
sisted on. Be it so : yet Epicurus protests he can- 
not conceive what some people would have him 
understand by their confining the summum bonum 
to this honest as. It is gibberish and jargon, he 
tells us, to talk of resigning u p all to this hontstas, 
unless you will suppose it high-seasoned with plea- 
sure ; neither could it ever enter into his head af- 
ter all the mighty bustle about the word honest as,. 
what is the proper sense of it. In the vulgar ac- 
ceptation the word hone stum, as he understands, 
goes for every thing that is cried up and applauded 
in the world. And although, continues he, that 
which is thus celebrated may by chance now and 
then surpass the sweetness of some sorts of pleasure, 
yet it is the pleasure it affords which invests it with 
it* value and significancy. Take notice now how 



SO CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

widely the opinion of your matchless philosopher 
that has extended his conquests over Greece, Italy, 
and all the barbarous nations, differs from mine, 
The term hones turn he will maintain is unintelligi- 
ble, unless either you make it stand for voluptas, 
(pleasure) or intend it shall denote any thing that 
has the acclamations of the multitude to magnify 
it : whereas I am fully satisfied they as often be- 
stow their encomiums upon things, which carry in 
them a moral turpitude, and though sometimes it 
happens otherwise, and they place their commenda- 
tions right, yet nothing can owe its goodnes to their 
commendations. Whateverupon the score of its own 
excellency and rectitude becomes the subject of 
praise, lays no claim to the word honestum by vir- 
tue of any certificate from a multitude, but be- 
cause, although no mortal had known any thing of 
it, or spoke any thing concerning it, in its own na- 
ture it would be lovely and laudable. According- 
ly, finding himself unable to hold out against his 
own convictions, Epicurus elsewhere changes his 
note, and says as you , do, that there is no living a 
life of pleasure but for him that lives up to the rules 
of ingenuity and virtue. And what is living up to 
the rules of ingenuity and virtue? Why the same 
thing as living a life of pleasure. Very good ! 
That is as much as to say living up to the rules of 
ingenuity and virtue is all one with living up to 
the rules of ingenuity and virtue ; as the rules of 
ingenuity and virtue are all one with the voice of a 



BOOK THE SECOND. 81 

multitude. Why ? No life of pleasure without 
their good liking? For shame! Shall a wise man 
spread the sails of life to the breath of ideots ? 
Well then ! What are we to understand in this 
passage by honestum ? That, and only that, for 
certain, which is truly and in its own nature valu- 
able. For if it were valuable because of the con- 
sequent pleasure, so is every good joint of meat 
that hangs in the shambles. One would therefore 
imagine Epicurus not to be the man, that having 
set so high a price upon honestas as to declare it 
impossible for us to live a life of pleasure without it, 
makes the people's applause the very essence of this 
honestas, and a most necessary condition of pleasure 
too : as who would not wonder thathe should suppose 
any such thing as honestum, that is not rationally and 
in a moral construction such, and that does not re- 
commend itself by the lustre of its own excellency? 
Wherefore, Torquatus, I could notforbear observing 
with what ostentation and emphasis you brought 
out that express assertion of Epicurus, that there 
is no coming at the pleasures oflife, but upon the 
terms of honour, honesty, regularity, and prudence. 
The dignity and eminence of the qualities answer- 
ing to those words had you under such an influence 
that you sprung upward in the pronouncing, kept 
your body raised, and fixed your eyes upon us the 
better to rivet your apology for Epicurus, that 
there are passages to be found in him, where he 
Mt tributes their due praises to honour and justice. 

M 



82 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

And undoubtedly you did well and wisely to make 
your use and advantage of those words, which are 
of that peculiar importance, that did they not stand 
adopted into philosophic terms, we could not so 
much as know what occasion we have for philoso- 
phy ! Those very sounds, prudence, fortitude, 
justice, temperance, a language almost unknown to 
Epicurus, are, and have ever been, so manv phil- 
tres upon the souls of the greatest men to engage 
them in philosophical studies. The most acute 
sense is the sense of sight, says Plato, yet not so 
acute as to compass a view of all those charms and 
graces of zvisdom, which might we but once behold, 
O ! how entirely would they captivate our affec- 
tions and faculties ! For no reason in the world, 
to be sure, but because wisdom has a ready hand 
at catering and preparing our pleasures ! It is 
this that justice is only good for ! And that anti- 
quated proverb has nothing in it, quicum in tenebris, 
which is as much as to say, that we are to take no 
advantages against any man upon an improbability 
of being discovered ! This adage may serve for a 
general instruction, not to consider so much who 
sees our actions as what our actions are. So that 
when you suggested how miserably the minds of 
profligate people are tortured, as v v eli by their own 
acts of reflection upon themselves, as by the ter- 
rors and gastliness of punishments either present 
or expected, pardon me if I think you trifled : for 
it is not necessary only to make an instance of your 



BOOK THE SECOND. 8$ 

fearful, faullering sinners, with so much grace left 
about them as to execute the rigour of the law 
upon themselves, and so little courage as to start 
at their own shadow. No, no : we are ready to 
produce you your politic, ingenious rascals that 
make a science of villany as well as a trade, and 
are safe enough if they can but practice out of all 
danger of an information. At present we have 
nothing to say to Lucius Tabulus the prtetor, that 
was so notoriously corrupted in a cause of homicide, 
as upon a motion made the year after to the people 
by their tribune Publius Scsevola, whether he 
should be called to account for it, and upon a 
resolution of the people that he should stand his 
trial, to be arraigned before Cneius Csepio the 
consul, appointed judge by an order of senate : 
and when the sentence of banishment was after a 
short hearing passed upon him, the fact had been 
so clearly proved that he did not so much as open 
his mouth in his own defence. Our business is 
with your close intriguing offenders, (such was 
Quintus Pompeius when he denied the Numantian 
league,) and with your men of boldness and brass, 
that have bound conscience, perhaps without much 
difficulty, to its good behaviour, and are become 
such artists at keeping their own counsel, such 
finished proficients in dissimulation and grimace 
as to bemoan the iniquity of the age when they 
hear of other people's crimes. These are your 
seasoned ivags. For example Publius Sextilus 
Rufus, I remember, made oath how that Quintus 



14 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

Fadius G alius had left him his heir, and in the 
body of the testator's will it was found that he had 
directed Sextilius to write his daughter Fadia sole 
inheritress. But Sextilius averred he knew nothing 
of it. And so he might securely, for there was 
none of us who as friends of the deceased were 
concerned in the arbitration that could disprove 
him, though it was abundantly more reasonable to 
believe that Sextilius had forsworn himself to come 
by the estate than that Fadius could have so little 
natural affection as not really to have given those 
directions which were mentioned in his will. Sex- 
tilius urged moreover that he had been sworn to 
the observance of the Voconian law, and might not 
act against the tenor of it, unless we, the friends of 
the deceased, would bear him harmless. To be 
short, it was the opinion not only of us young men, 
but of all the judicious and eminent sages upon 
the spot, that the daughter could inherit no more 
than what she might claim by the Voconian law. 
So Sextilius run away with a large estate, which 
had never fallen into his clutches, had he been 
such a fool of a philosopher as Xo 1 prefer honesty 
and fair-dealing to his own lucre and advantage. 
O ! but I warrant you he never enjoyed himself 
afterwards ! Yes, and his estate too, and the more 
for getting it so dextrously. The morsel was the 
richer and the sweeter, because even the letter of 
the law conspired to bring it him ; though rather 
than wantonness and pleasure should go without 
so plentiful a fund, he ought, at least if he was a 



BOOK THE SECOND. 85 

true Epicurean, to have run hazards for it : seeing 
if every man who affirms that honour and probity 
are things for themselves desirable is obliged to 
encounter any danger in their service, then on the 
other hand ought every body that consecrates all 
things else to his idol of pleasure, when his way 
t o wards his pleasures lies through dangers, to ven- 
ture on. Either Epicurus must not think it worth 
his while to press the pursuit of his own summum 
bonum, or if he does, whenever he has it in his 
power to make prize of a tempting inheritance, 
which will be a means of improving and multiplying 
his pleasures, he must enterprise as daringly as if 
a Scipio in thirst of glory were to drive a Hannibal 
back into his own country. Scipio, let me tell you, 
run an ugly risk, and that consulting not his 
pleasure but his honour. And therefore your 
philosopher cannot for shame, but when an interest 
may be served, face all opposition rather than not 
gain his point ; as provided none of his enormities 
takes air, he furnishes himself with diversion out 
of them, or if he come to be discovered he is wiser 
than to let the formidable face of punishment affect 
him, having been trained up to a contempt of death, 
of banishment, or pain ! which, by the way, though 
tolerable to a wise man, because forsooth 1 his share 
of good must surpass his share of evil of course, 
yet, as you manage the matter, is to a wicked 
man an insupportable grievance. Further, let 
us suppose a knave that with his good parts 



8<> CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

has power and authority, a man of as wide 
a command was Marcus Crassus : not that Cras- 
sus abused those advantages : or such as Pom- 
pey at this time of day, who fairly deserves 
the thanks of his country-men for dealing so 
handsomely by them, when if he pleased,, he might 
do them a thousand ill turns, and not smart for 
it. The base tricks are innumerable that a man 
might play, without so much as forfeiting his repu- 
tation or incurring any censure. Should your 
friend upon his death-bed leave his instructions 
with you by word of mouth for his daughter to 
succeed as sole inheritress to the estate, without 
any body by to attest it, and not commit them to 
writing as Fadius did, I make no question but 
you would punctually fulfil those instructions, and 
so perhaps Epicurus too would have done. Thus 
Sextus Peducaeus, son to Sextos, that miracle of 
worth and integrity, a gentleman of letters too, and 
blessed, as we see, with a son as upright and inge- 
nuous in all his dealings as his father, when 
Caius Plotius of Nursia, a noble Roman knight 
had notified his will to him only by word of mouth, 
and before no witnesses, went directly to his relict, 
who was altogether ignorant of the matter, ac- 
quainted the lady how her husband had disposed 
of the estate, and saw her settled in the full and 
free possession of it. I am confident Torquatus 
would have acquitted himself as honestly. But 
then at the same time he must have advanced a 



BOOK THE SECOND. 87 

manifest proof against bis own doctrine ; for that 
how much soever he pretends to subject all things 
besides to pleasure and self-ends, yet in his prac- 
tice and conduct he would give pleasure the go-by, 
and stick to his duty ; which makes it a clear case 
that a right disposition and temper of mind has 
and must have the ascendant over all the sinister 
cajoling persuasions of a perverted judgment. 
Suppose (as the casuistry of Carneades supposes) 
a person whose death would turn to your advan- 
tage were preparing without any suspicion to seat 
himself over the nest of an adder, and you knew 
of an adder's being there ; though the law takes no 
hold of you, and nobody can make appear that 
you knew it, you are nevertheless a murderer un- 
less you gave him a timely caution. But I have 
dwelt already too long upon this head, especially 
considering 1 have handled it at large under the 
person of Laslius in my discourses concerning a 
common-wealth, and that it is indeed a proposi- 
tion which carries its own evidence in its bowels, 
that there can be no such thing as a good man, un- 
less it be taken for granted that nature herself ties 
upon us ail the duties of justice and fair-dealing, 
and that these duties are not to be resolved into 
pretences of utility. Let this be further applied 
to those two virtues which consist in bringing the 
brutal part of us under obedience to the sceptre of 
reason, the virtues of modesty and temperance. 
Does not chastity suffer if bestialiaties be conmit- 



88 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

ted, though all passes in privacy and darkness ? 
Or suppose you no crime can be flagitious if it 
escape the brand of public infamy ? Again, is it 
the way of heroes to make an estimate and compu- 
tation of the pleasures they are to carry off with 
them, before they break in upon the enemy's ranks, 
and sacrifice their lives to the interest of their coun- 
try ? Or is it a noble vehemence and explosion of the 
soul that drives them forward ? Tell me freely, 
Torquatus, were that illustrious ancestor of yours 
now present at the conferences we are holding, 
whether of the constructions we have passed upon 
his behaviour would he take to himself, yours or 
mine ? Would he rather have it asseverated by me 
that he had no other aims than to be an instrument 
of good to his country, or by yourself, that he only 
designed to make his own pennyworths and advan- 
tages ? At least if you had unfolded your mean- 
ing in plain terms, and told him to his face he ne- 
ver did a brave thing in his life, but still there was 
an expectation of pleasure at the bottom, how had 
he taken it at your hands, do you think ? No mat- 
ter, because you will have it so, though I can never 
consent that such a gallant captain as Torquatus 
shall be said to have served under the banner of 
pleasure, yet for once let him take his place among 
the mercenary rout. But then must his poor col- 
league, Publius Decius, the first consul of the fa- 
mily, have had the scab of pleasure upon him too, 
when the knight-errant so solemnly vowed himself 



BOOK THE SECOND. 89 

a victim for his country, and gallopped full-speed 
into the main body of the Latin army ? It tickled 
his fancy, undoubtedly, to think of being hacked to 
pieces within a quarter of an hour ! Nothing less 
than the charms of that assurance could have 
spurred him on to destruction, and with a keener 
appetite too than if he had been riding in as much 
haste after Epicurus's pleasure as Epicurus himself 
could have wished. What is more, I cannot per- 
suade myself his son, had the father acted upon 
any other than a principle of bravery and honour, 
would have copied after him as he did in the time 
of his fourth consulship ; nor that his grandson, 
the third in a direct line that lost his life for the 
public (and he a consul too when he fell) would 
have fought and died so desperately in the war 
with Pyrrhus. After these I could produce you 
instances of Greeks, but that, in comparison of our 
own, they are neither eminent nor many, as those 
of Leonidas, Epaminondas, and three or four be- 
sides ; whereas were I to reckon up all the bright 
ornaments of this kind with which our own country 
has blossomed ; your principle of pleasure must im- 
mediately prostrate itself a captive before our prin- 
ciple of virtue ; nor would the remainder of the 
day be long enough for such an enumeration. Be- 
side, I may fairly say as Aulus Varius, that old 
testy, severe judge, used to sav to the person that 
sat next him in the court, when a good many wit- 
nesses had given in their depositions, and new ones 



90 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

were called, O me ! O me ! if we have not had 
enough of evidences yet, we shall never have enough 
of them, take my xvord for it. Nay, to come 
nearer home and appeal to a gentleman of 
such renowned ancestors as yourself; was pleasure 
the inducement in your younger years when you 
opened a charge before that magnanimous patriot, 
as the common-wealth knew him to be at all times, 
but especially during his consulship, and after- 
wards, I mean your own father? Under whose con- 
duct, and by whose suggestion I too was so happy 
as to give some proofs how much more I thought 
myself obliged to be concerned for the good of the 
community than for any private interests of my 
own. It made me smile when 1 heard you stating 
the opposition between the circumstances of a 
mortal beset with the greatest variety imaginable 
of the most exquisite pleasures, and not so much 
as under the pain of a scratch, or obnoxious to any 
future ; and the circumstances of a poor creature 
torn with inexpressible torments in all parts of his 
body, without so much as the least hopes of a re- 
laxation ; and then putting the question, whether 
any thing could exceed the happiness of the for- 
mer, or the misery of the latter ; and so making 
your conclusion, that pain must be the greatest of 
evils, and pleasure the summum bonum. There 
was one Lucius Thorius Balbus, of Lanuvium. 
(Probably you do not remember him) this man 
was thoroughly devoted to pleasure, had so perfect 



BOOK THE SECONB. 91 

a knowledge of the whole mystery of it, and kept 
himself so well furnished with all accommodations 
for it, that he could have challenged any man to 
name him a pleasure, though it were never so racy 
and delicate, which his ware-house did not afford 
in plenty and perfection ; so little troubled with 
superstitious grumblings, as to make a jest of all 
the sacrifices and temples ; and so unapprehensive 
of the terrors of death, that he died with his 
sword in his hand for the service of his country. 
He measured his appetites and desires by his ca- 
pacity of fruition, and had nothing to say to Epi- 
eurus's division of them : only he had an eye to his 
health, and used wholesome exercise, to quicken the 
inclinations of his palate. His diet was rich and 
picquant, but as easy of digestion as he could con- 
trive it. His wines luscious, but then he drank 
w ith caution. In a word, he left not out one of all 
those ingredients, which, if we deduct, Epicurus 
has told us he knows not for his part, what we 
mean by any bonum or human good. He laboured 
under no sort of pain, though if any had seized 
him, he would have undergone it like a soldier, 
and made more use, believe me, of the physicians 
than of the philosophers. Nobody had a more 
cheerful complexion, a better state of health, a 
livelier air and appearance, or a larger portion of 
all the delights and pleasures in which he could 
possibly indulge himself. Here then we have 
found such a casket of happiness as comes up to 



9% CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

your own description. And yet shall I? No; 
virtue herself takes the assertion out of my mouth, 
and speaks her Markus Regulus to have been ten 
thousand times a happier man, even at that junc- 
ture, when of his own accord, and without any 
compulsion but of conscience, in respect of his 
faith which he had engaged to the enemy, he left 
his own country, returned to Carthage, and lay 
deprived of the means of sleep and sustenance ; 
even then, if virtue may be heard and heeded, he 
was a happier man than Thorius with his bottles 
upon a bed of roses. He had been a renowned 
commander in the wars, received the honour of a 
triumph, and born the office of consul more than 
once, but the glory of all former passages of his life 
he thought by no means equal to that of the last 
evidence he gave of his integrity and constancy. 
We that hear the story may fancy his condition was 
miserable ; but the party that is the subject of it, 
embraced condition as very eligible. It is not wan- 
tonness, merriment, laughter, jests, nor any other 
symptoms of levity that imply happines, but reso- 
lution and constancy of mind, whatever outward 
aspect persons and things may carry. When the 
king's son had committed a rape upon Lucretia, 
after she had abjured in a solemn manner the 
whole body of the citizens, without more ado she 
stabbed herself to the heart; and by the loss of 
her, at ^he instigation of Brutus who led on the 
people, the community at first made seizure of 



BOOK THfc SECOND. 95 

their democratical liberties ; as in honour to her 
memory her father and husband were created the 
first consuls. Lucius Virginius, a poor plebeian, 
about sixty years after put an end to the life of his 
own daughter Virginia, rather than she should be 
debauched by Appius Claudius, then sitting at 
the helm. Now therefore, Torquatus, you have 
no other choice but either to fall foul upon these 
examples, or to drop your pleas for pleasure. 
Very ponderous pleas, no doubt, and a hopeful 
cause that has not so much as a testimonial or a 
recommendation to countenance it from any one 
illustrious instance whatsoever ! The way which 
we usuallv take is to appeal to historical monu- 
ments for the authority of such extraordinary per- 
sons as have bestowed the whole course of their 
lives in conquering difficulties, and would have 
stopped their ears at the name of pleasure, which 
none of you, whenever you dispute, dare pretend 
to fetch out a record or a precedent. You shall 
have ail other pretenders to philosophy telling you 
stories ever and anon of Lycurgus, Solon, Miltiades, 
Themistocles, and Epaminondas ; but the Epicu- 
rean schools dare not so much as whisper their 
names. To give one hint more m,on the matter 
in hand ; we have reason to think ourselves abun- 
dantly supplied with the choicest instances of 
merit by my ti iend Atticus's collections. Let any 
man single out ever a one of the lives lie has written, 
and then tell us impartially his opinion, whether it 



$4 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

does not eclipse the splendor of all the voluminous 
accounts about Themistocles. Not to disparage 
the Greeks neither, because it must be confessed 
we derived our philosophy and politeness from 
them. But still they took those liberties which in 
us it were a fault to take. The stoics and peripa- 
tetics are by no means agreed. The former will 
not vouchsafe the title of good to any thing but 
virtue and moral worth ; while the latter assign a 
very peculiar priority and preeminence to virtue 
and moral worth, but say withal, that the external 
advantages of body and fortune are good in their 
degree. This is a truly noble and sublime contro- 
versy, virtue being the subject, and the superiority 
of it presupposed on both sides. Now whenever 
we come to engage with your men, we must have 
our ears, of course, offended with clauses relating 
to those sordid and obscene pleasures which Epi- 
curus rarely dismisses for a period together. Do 
but meditate some time, Torquatus, upon your own 
counsels and resolutions, and I am confident you 
will presently grow sick of your hypothesis. Cle- 
an thes's emblem shames you out of it. It was a 
pertinent and a pretty design as he set it forth in 
his discourses to the imaginations of his scholars. 
He bid them conceive pleasure in effigy y a belli 
very gaudily and royally attired, seated upon a 
throne, and figures all about her symbolizing so many 
virtues for her majesty s maids of honour , and sup- 
posed to have no other employment or office but to 



BOOK THE SECONB. 95 

wait upon her and serve her, except now and then to 
advise her in her ear, (that is. as much as one party in 
a picture can advise another) to behave herself like 
a well-bred gentlewoman, and do nothing that might 
shock the minds of men, or prove fatal in the con- 
sequences ; Neither, may it please your highness, 
are we ignorant that the end of our being, and the 
xv hole of our business is to obey your commands* 
O ! but still Epicurus lays it down as an impossi- 
bility that any man should be happy, unless he 
lives prudently and virtuously. This is the pro- 
position which is to dazzle us. But what is it to 
me whether Epicurus maintains the affirmative or 
the negative ? I am only concerned to examine 
what the man that makes pleasure the summum 
bonum must maintain, if he will talk consistently 
with himself. Urge any thing like a reason if you 
can, why the pleasures of Thorius, Posthumius, 
Chius, and Orata, the most accomplished volup- 
tuary of them all, were not of the first rate ? I 
have before observed how gently Epicurus deals 
by his voluptuaries, only cautioning them against 
the folly of indulging their passions either of desire 
or fear, and prescribing such a remedy against 
both, as will not bear hard upon the vices of luxury 
and excess ; for truly the philosopher has no objec- 
tions that he knows of, to point against sensuality, 
when it is no longer encumbered by these two pas- 
sions. It remains, therefore, that while you go oun 
to make pleasure the standard of all human good. 



9& CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

you cannot pretend to patronise or lay claim to 
virtue, in as much as even he that takes care how 
he hurls his neighbour purely for fear of incom- 
moding himself, is far from being or deserving to 
be called a good or a just man Do not you know, 
nemo plus est, ike. It is downright irreligion to 
be religious out of fear? Lay that to heart, I 
beseech you, as an indisputable truth* No man, 
believe me, is the honester for lying under such an 
awe ; and if that be all the restraint that is upon 
him, whenever it goes off, he must be a rogue ; as 
his fears will certainly vanish upon the first oppor- 
tunity of solitude or privacy that flatters him, or at 
least, if he thrives and rises, upon the stock of his 
power and prosperity. In a word, we may very 
charitably presume he would much rather be 
thought a good man in order to his being a rogue, 
than really be a good man though he was sure to 
have his honesty misconstrued. Upon the whole, 
you must acknowledge you have palmed a spurious 
mimic justice upon us, instead of that which is 
genuine and invariable, and favoured us with two 
notable pieces of advice ; first to make slight of all 
the eternal rules of conscience, and secondly to 
court and move by the precarious estimations of 
other people. And this that we aliedge against 
you in relation to the virtue of justice, affects you 
equally as to the other three virtues, all which you 
suppose fixed upon a pedestal of pleasure, that is 
to say, stone walls upon a surface of water. I 



BOOK THE SECOND. 97 

would gladly be informed concerning that same 
Torquatus we were discoursing of just now, whe- 
ther he had any thing in him of fortitude or not; 
for as little hopes as you give me of ever seducing 
yourself, I cannot, if I would, force the dear and 
honoured examples of your family out of my head, 
but must enjoy myself in the remembrance of them, 
especially of that incomparable person Aulus Tor- 
quatus, as having been my particular friend, and 
zealous supporter in very dangerous times. Both 
of you can witness it. And yet as much as I pre- 
sume to value myself, and wish to be valued upon 
a sincere principle and love of gratitude, I could 
not have any relish of those obligations, if I sus- 
pected that he was pleased to befriend me, not out 
of tenderness, but for his own ends and emolument. 
It will not save your cause to reply upon me, that 
every good action is itself an advantage and a gain 
for the agent. Keep to that, and we have you to 
ourselves. For all that we affirm and contend for, 
is this, that virtue is its oivn rezvard. Epicurus 
will not hear of it ; on the other hand, he makes 
pleasure the wages and reward of all our actions 
and purposes. But not to forget your relation ; 
I tell you plainly, if when he accepted of the chal- 
lenge of the Gall, fought him at the battle of Anien, 
despoiled him of his chain, and acquired along 
uith it an honourable appellation, and all this, as I 
conceive, upon the score of the congruity of such 
an action to the dignity of human nature; if he 

O 



98 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

would not have thus exerted himself, but upon the 
motive of pleasure, I cannot have any opinion of 
his fortitude. Again ; let only the fear of punish- 
ment or infamy be security for ail our modesty, our 
chastity, and our temperance, instead of the real 
sacredness of those ties which ought to guard them : 
and what lewdness and brutality is there so vile 
and abominable which a man will demur upon, 
when he can trust to secrecy, impunity, or the 
loftiness of his condition and character ? How foul 
and untoward an imputation were it, sir, to lie at 
your own door, should we put the case that, bright 
and admired as is your sense, your virtue, and the 
magnificence of your character : yet so dishonour- 
able are your intentions, pursuits, and endeavours, 
and so detestable is that very end into which you 
resolve the whole conduct of your life, that you 
could not make a discovery of them to the world 
but you must colour and tremble ? Ere long you 
are to put on the magistrate, and on that occasion 
must make your harangue to the people, and let 
them understand what measures you design to follow 
in the administration of justice. I suppose you 
will think it proper also to go on in the old road, 
and to give your auditory an account both of your 
ancestors and yourself. Now will it not be very 
engaging and popular, to declare that as you never 
did any one action in your life but pleasure was 
your aim in it, so you will regard none but induce- 
ments of pleasure throughout the course of your 



BOOK THE SECOXP. 99 

consulat ? O but, say you, I hope I have a little 
more wit than so to bespeak a mob of ignorant 
mechanics ! What think you then of one of the 
courts of justice to discover your mind in, or if thht 
be too public yet, of the senate-house itself? Nor 
there neither will you try the experiment, I dare 
answer for you. But why, if it were not scanda- 
lous to utter such a period? And if so, methinks 
I and Triarius, before whom you can talk at this 
rate, have not had fair quarter from you. It may 
be so, but the fault is our own. We impose an 
odious and an undeserved signification upon a 
word of mighty merit, or rather we are no judges 
of the meaning of wluptas or pleasure. This 
is everlastingly your evasion. You can dissect 
the dark orthography when you please, and we too 
are allowed to comprehend your projects when you 
read us lessons about the impossibilities you are 
big with of atoms and spaces betiveen world and 
world, but are fatally incapable of any notion of 
pleasure, which every sparroxv understands ; though, 
whenever I think fit, I can force you to confess 
that I comprehend not only what is pleasure, a 
pleasing tremor upon the senses, but also what is 
the pleasure whose quarrel is espoused by yourself; 
and sometimes we have it in the shape of that 
tremulous, active pleasure which I have now defined, 
and then it is capable of variations ; and sometimes 
we have it in the phantom of that incomparable 
pleasure of indolence, and then it is a still, jived 



100 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

pleasure, and admits of no variations. And even 
let it go for a pleasure, upon condition I may ask 
you the question, whether you will set so stupid a 
pleasure before you as the scope of all your actions ? 
If you are ashamed to answer me in the affirmative, 
however take heart, be plain with the people, and 
make known your resolution, never to act, while 
you are in office, and when you are not, upon any 
other bottom than that of self-interest, never to 
play any other game but what you are to be a 
winner by ; and guess how the assembly will rend 
their throats to return the compliment, and what a 
golden age they will promise themselves upon your 
advancement to the consular power, which they are 
impatient at this time to put into your hands ; and 
yet if propositions of this nature be so scandalous, 
that yo,u have neither confidence nor courage 
enough to make them part of a public declamation ; 
what prevails with you to riot in them to yourself, 
and to your friends ? With you, that are habitu- 
ated to the language of the peripatetics and the 
stoics, and talk loud, especially in all places of 
public judicature, about duty, justice, honour, 
honesty, performance of promises, what comports 
with the dignity of the government and grandeur 
of the Roman republic, and what dangers, what 
deaths are to be rushed upon for the sake of it. 
Now we poor easy cits, little imagining how you 
laugh at us all the while in your sleeve, glow again 
with admiration and extasy. None but high flights 



BOOK THE SECOND. 101 

and Catonian strains of philosophy escape your 
lips upon such occasions; not a single word of 
pleasure, neither of your active pleasure or voluptas, 
(as that word is understood in town and country by 
all who are acquainted with our language) nor yet 
of that still, composed pleasure, which nobody gives 
the name of pleasure to but yourselves. Recollect 
a little and shew us how you got a dispensation to 
make use of our words, and affix your own mean- 
ings to them. Should a humour take you of affect* 
ing in your aspect or gate more than ordinary pre- 
tences to gravity, you would not be the same per- 
son you were before ; how then can you put upon 
us nothing but out-side and ostentation ? How can 
you adulterate words, say one thing, and mean 
another, and do by your notions as you do by your 
garb, put them on or off as occasion calls you 
from your house to the chair of public authority, 
or thence to your house ? Can you reckon this lati- 
tude allowable ? Commend me much rather to 
such frank and sound, such candid, handsome, 
and brave assertions, as a man without any base 
and pitiful reservations would be glad to have 
either the senate, the people, or any council or con- 
course in the world hear him delivering. As to 
the matter of friendship, I cannot see where you 
have left any room for such a thing, or how one 
man should be another's friend, unless it be for 
the sake of his friend that he loves him. For 
what Goes the word amare ) (to love) from which 



102 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

amicitia, (friendship) import, but to wish all the 
good we can to another, though we shall reap 
no advantage by it ourselves ? Doubtless, you 
will tell me, I shall find my account in it, if I 
will take up with such a principle as this. It is 
odds I might if I dissembled it very artfully. 
But, I hope, you have no thoughts of being a friend 
according to true etymology, till you are such in- 
deed ; and that you can never be, till your breast is 
lined with a sincerity and ardour of affection, an af- 
fection of spontaneous growth, and not propagated 
out of any precarious pursuits of private advantage. 
But what if I would make my own fortune ? then just 
so long as you find you are a gainer ', you will be 
a friend, and when there is no more to be got, the 

fewel fails and the friendship goes out. For friend- 
ship and interest are not always inseparable, and 
how will you contrive when they once come to in- 
terfere ? Will you renounce the former ? If so, it 
must have been of an unaccountable kind. Will 
you be true to it ? Then you are no longer true to 
your own principles, if I rightly represent them, as 
proposing personal utility for X\\ejinal cause of all 

friendship. It is possible, you will desire not to 
be reproached with it, though some time or other 
you should abandon your friend. But why re- 
proached with it, if it were not a matter well wor- 
thy of reproach ? Now here lies the point ; though 
perhaps you will not utterly desert a friend to a- 
void an incpnvenience, yet you will be wishing him 



BOOK THE SECOND. 103 

out of the world when you cannot better your cir- 
cumstances in it by your intimacy with him. At 
least, if instead of proving serviceable, it so falls out 
that he must cost you trouble and fatigue, estate, 
or perhaps life itself ; then it will be high time to 
look about you, and bethink yourself of yourself, 
and of those pleasures which are the end of your 
existence. Or will you rather, as the famous Py- 
thagorean did, present your own body in the room 
cf your friend's to the fury of a Sicilian tyrant? 
Will you, rather than not redeem his life with your 
own, counterfeit him, and swear yourself Orestes 
when you are Pylades ; or being Orestes confute 
Pylades, and demonstrate yourself Orestes ? Or if 
you could not demonstrate it, beg both of you might 
not die, but that your friend might be spared? 
Yes, I know full well, Torquatus, you are not so 
ridden with apprehensions of pain or death as to 
hesitate at all this, or at any honourable manage- 
ment whatever. But our inquiry is not, which 
way your own disposition, but which way the 
principles of your philosophy lead you. And 
notwithstanding Epicurus rodomontades in his 
commendations of friendship, yet his institu- 
tions and precepts which you have imbibed, and 
now vindicate, utterly overthrow all duties of it. 
How can that be when Epicurus himself had so 
many bosom-friends? Did ever I question Epicu- 
rus's probity, candour, or good nature ? It is not 
his conduGt and course of life which I bring to the 
shrift, but the judgment he has passed upon things. 



104 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

To vilify an adversary, that is for the vanity of the 
Greeks. I own he never failed to discharge the 
part of a friend ; but for all that, if what I have 
urged, is true, (and an academic, you know, must 
not be oxer-positive) it was a practice of supere- 
rogation in him. I shall be told that the generality 
of the world have entertained different notions of 
him, and thought they had very good reason for it. 
They have so ; but I am little influenced at any 
time by the noice of that generality. The choicest 
excellencies of every art, profession, or science, 
nay, and of virtue itself, are the least common and 
published. Were it not that their virtue had over- 
powered the principle of pleasure, neither Epicurus 
himself, nor so many of his followers could have 
proved such sincere, good friends, or men of such 
an exemplary stability and sobriety, so unconcerned 
about pleasure, and to duty so resigned. Their 
lives and conversations confute them. And where- 
as it is a reproach upon the majority of mank nd 
that they say greater things than they do, it is ac- 
knowledged in favour of these gentlemen, that they 
do better things than they speak. Yet all this does 
not come quite home to the point, as we shall see 
by looking over the particulars you suggested re- 
lating to friendship, among which one had so many 
of Epicurus's features, that I could almost have 
sworn I heard it from himself. It was this, that 
it is our business to set a-foot amicable corre- 
spondences, in regard, there is no living securely, 
nor enjoying ourselves, unless pleasure be well 



BOOK THE SECOND. 105 

guarded with friendship. However, this has had 
my answer already. Of the opinion which was 
next mentioned, and bears a fresher date as well 
as a better construction, Epicurus, as I remember, 
has never taken the least notice ; that when we 
first lay out for friends we are wrought upon by 
self-interest, but that when our friendships reach 
a maturity, the outer-coat of pleasure peels away, 
and we love our friends for their own sakcs. Tins 
account of friendship has its flaws too, but how- 
ever, I will not throw it back upon their hands. 
Only be it observed, that though I let it serve my 
turn, it will serve theirs very little that advance it, 
as being a plain confession out of their own mouths 
that sometimes a good man acts upon a better 
bottom than a prospect and pursuit of pleasure. 
The third notion you gave us was a supposal of a 
tacit compact obliging the wise to bear the same 
favour and good affection to their friends as to 
themselves, by which means they enhance their 
own happiness ; and you tell us further, that these 
measures are not only practicable, but have been 
actually experimented. When this league was 
in agitation, they might as well, methinks, have 
tacked another to it, and agreed upon it among 
themselves to admire and embrace justice, modes- 
ty, and every other virtue for their own absolute 
intrinsic merit. And yet at last if our friend- 
ships have no other nerves than those of advan- 
tage and lucre, if we do not think them worth the 

p 



106 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

seeking, for their own sakes, upon abstracted en- 
couragements, and purely as they are a commerce 
of affections ; what hinders but thai we should 
rid our hands of them, when they come in compe- 
tition with a rich farm, or a pleasant seat ? Here 
I expect you will be putting in with Epicurus's 
courtly savings in commendation of friendship. 
And for me he may say what he will ; my pro- 
vince is only to examine whether what he says is 
agreeable to right reason and his own hypothesis. 
It seems, it is for the profits arising out of it that 
we covet any man's friendship. Say you so ? 
Then whether of the two, think you, may it be 
most worth your while to have a property in, our 
friend Triarius here, or the granaries of Puteoli? 
Run over your common-places, and urge first of 
all, that friends are a munition and defence. But 
if you want these, you need only have recourse 
to your own person, to the laws, or to any com- 
mon acquaintance. Secondly, that by contract- 
ing friendships we keep clear of the hatred and 
displeasure of the zvorld. I thought Epicurus had 
furnished you with his preservative precepts against 
any of those blasts, or however as long as you can 
afford good and lord-like pay, a rush for our 
Pyladean heartiness ; you need never be without 
your life-guards and your garrisons. Well, but 
what must you do for a companion to exchange, 
notions, crack a jest zdth y and impart a secret to. 
Even make a companion of yourself, or when you 



BOOK THE SECOWD. 10/ 

are tired with soliloquies, it is but calling in an 
occasional acquaintance. Besides too, though you 
should be disappointed as to these, the inconve- 
nience is a trifle, and weighs nothing against the 
profits of a golden mountain ! Now therefore to be 
serious, you must be convinced, that as a friendship 
founded upon sincerity of affection is all over ex- 
cellent and noble ; so the closest intimacy, if self- 
interest lies at the heart , is presently forgotten 
when any body else outbids. And therefore if you 
would have us friends indeed, I beseech you, let 
me be the object of your love, and not my posses- 
sions. But I have already expatiated too far in so 
clear a case, and might at first have stopped short 
at the proposition itself, that if every thing must 
give way to pleasure , virtue and friendship can 
have no footing in the world. And now, to leave 
standing none of your arguments, I shall proceed 
to pass a few reflections on that part of your dis- 
course, which as yet I have not spoke to. And 
first, in regard it is our own happiness to which we 
direct and refer all our philosophy, and in quest 
whereof we give ourselves up to speculations and 
theories, while these opiniators resolve the felicity 
of life into this thing, and those into that, as 
particularly you of the Epicurean school fasten 
it all upon pleasure, on the other hand making 
infelicity and pain synonymous terms; let us 
look into the nature of this human happiness 
as understood by you Epicureans. That eve- 



108 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

ry wise man may be master of his own happi- 
ness, wherever it lies, I suppose you will give me 
leave to lay it down as a postulate For if he may 
be deprived of the happiness of his life, then is he 
not properly happy, since there is no depending 
upon the steadiness and duration of that which 
we know to be fickle and variable ; and yet it is 
impossible but that, as long as Providence has not 
given us a lease of its favours, the fear of those dis- 
tresses which the loss of them may, some time or 
other, bring upon us, will be perpetually affecting 
us, and as impossible for us to be happy while pos- 
sessed with apprehensions of such severe calamities. 
So that happiness at this rate is never to be com- 
passed, because it is not any lesser parcels, but the 
full and uninterrupted current of our time, which 
makes up the measure of a life of happiness : and 
no man's life can be denominated happy, unless it 
continue so throughout. The possibility of being 
happy at one time is destroyed by the possibilitj 
of being miserable at another, because he that finds 
himself obnoxious to misfortunes, is in that very 
respect unhappy. For a true blessedness of life, 
when it once commences, is as lasting and as un- 
discontinued as wisdom, the mother of it, , and 
falls not under that condition of perfection, where- 
of, as we learn from Herodotus, Solon admonished 
Croesus when he wished him to defer his judg- 
ment upon the happiness of any man's life until 
he had seen the close of it. Epicurus notwith- 



BOOK THE SECOND. 109 

standing, as explained by yourself, is positive that 
the length of its continuance adds nothing at all 
to the happiness of life, and that an eternal circle 
of delights would be no more than just adequate to 
those of a momentary opportunity. And here a- 
gain, the man falls foul upon himself. He has 
made pleasure the summum bonum, and yet will 
stand to it, that a determinate and stinted space of 
time can gather under it as large a compass of 
happiness as immortality itself. Those philoso- 
phers, I confess, who refer all our good to virtue, 
have sufficient reason to deny that our summum 
bonum gains bulk by the prolongation of our lives, 
because they maintain that in a plenitude of vir- 
tue lies the complement of our happiness. But 
for a philosopher to pin the perfection of human 
happiness upon pleasure, and afterwards assert 
that how short lived soever pleasure be, we should 
have no more of it, though it were ever so perma- 
nent, this, or I am mistaken, is to contradict him- 
self with a vengeance ! Besides if pleasure cannot 
receive any increase from permanency ', neither can 
pain. But the continuance of pain swells the evil 
of it ; and shall not the length of its duration am- 
plify the good of pleasure ? Or if it shall not, what 
then will become of that blessed condition and its 
eternity, wherein Epicurus has with so much de- 
votion seated the Deity? For if eternity be such 
an empty circumstance, his deity has not the least 
advantage of the philosopher, and the mortal 



110 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

might vie pleasures and summum bonum with the 
eternal being. But the mortal you will say, was 
subject to pain. Not at all. He has declared 
he could sing, O delicious! in the belly of Phala- 
ris's bull. And therefore if eternity makes no 
odds, as it includes no more than an infinite per- 
petuity of pleasure not more perfect and plenary 
than Epicurus himself was capable of, Epicurus, 
it is plain, stands upon the level with the Deity it- 
self. Now if the man and his maxims fall out* 
all his declamatory flourishes and rants will stand 
him in very little stead. The sum total of a 
happy life is the pleasure of the body, (and pro- 
vided you will make no more of it than what you 
used to do, a pleasure not distinct from that of 
the body,) the pleasure too, if it shall please you 
of the mind. But yet alas ! Which way shall a 
wise man procure a patent to hold this pleasure 
for life ? The materials of it being neither at his 
command, nor in his disposal, because they are 
not the forces of his own wisdom, but such provi- 
sions and furniture, as it ought to be the province 
of his wisdom to lay in for his pleasures. And 
these consist altogether of externals, and all extern 
rials are liable to casualties. The consequence 
therefore is obvious, that notwithstanding Epicu- 
rus's exiguam intervenire sapienti ; there are lit* 
tie or no negociations common to a wise man with 
fortune, all the happiness of human life is in the 
hands of Fortune* O but perhaps ! I quote him 



BOOK THE SECOND. Ill 

by piece- meal. Sapient em locupletat ipsa natura 
should have come in, every wise man has a fair 
pension from nature, and those perquisites Epi- 
curus tells us are easily fetched home. There he 
is in the right, and about the matter I will never 
quarrel with him, but leave him to quarrel with 
himself. The pleasure, he says, which a plain 
and cheap diet ministers, comes not a whit behind 
the relishes and flavours of the most palatable 
dainties. And I readily agree with him herein, 
that the choice of our diet is a thing of an indiffe- 
rent relation to the happiness of our lives. This 
is a real truth, and he shall have my good word 
for it. Socrates himself, who shewed pleasure 
not the least countenance or mercy, allows as 
much, where he makes a good stomach the best 
sauce to our meat, and a dry throat the best im- 
prover of our liquors* But then when I catch a 
man making over his all to pleasure, squaring his 
life by Galionius's rules, and yet preaching against 
luxury like a Piso, I can neither give that man 
the hearing, nor believe he speaks from his heart. 
That which facilitates the procurement of nature's 
riches is, as he teaches us, the sufficiency of a lit- 
tle for the supply of her occasions: but, under 
favour, not for the supply of Epicurus's pleasure. 
And though he is express in it, that the most or- 
dinar y accommodation yield as grateful a pleasure 
as the most chargeable, yet hereby he proves no 
more than that his mouth was out of taste as well 



112 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

his wits out of his head. Had be been a professed 
foe to pleasure, and told us he had rather make 
his dinner of a red-herring than upon a jole of 
sturgeon, it had been something : but seeing he 
has pitched upon pleasure for his summum bonum, 
it is no longer his reason, but his senses that must 
determine him, and the excellence of every thing 
that is valuable arises in proportion to the sweet- 
ness of the gusto. With all my heart however 
let him if he can, possess himself of his pleasures at 
a small rate, or even gratis, and let the satisfaction 
the Persians found in eating their nasturtium salads 
(which Xenophon speaks of) come up to the 
agreeableness of those profuse entertainments 
which so highly incensed Plato against the citi- 
zens of Syracuse. In a word, let it be as easy a 
concern as you please to feed your pleasures ; 
how shall we so order it that notwithstanding pain 
is our worst evil, yet no torment shall be able to 
make a breach in the happiness of life. Metrodo- 
rus, alias Epicurus the elder, where he is giving 
a description of a happy man, supposes it neces- 
sary that he should have a sound, healthy consti- 
tution of body, and a full assurance that he shall 
never lose it. Now which way are we to obtain 
a full assurance of what shall be our state of health 
either a year or an hour hence? So that although 
we should escape the greatest of evils, pain, yet 
because it is possible it may seize us the next 
minute, we must live continually in fear of il ; 



BOOK THfc SECOND. 113 

'and how can his life be a happy one who looks for 
the worst of evils to fall upon his head every mo- 
ment? However Epicurus has put us in a way to 
give pain a. diversion. A very rational undertaking ! 
I confess, to set about instructing us how we may 
make slight of the worst of evils ! Now the whole 
art of it lies in recollecting that the sharpest pains 
are the shortest. But what is it you mean by the 
shortest and sharpest ? Think you the most acute 
diseases have never held a man several days, nay 
months together? Yet, who knows? when you 
talk of sharpest pains, you may mean, perhaps, 
none but such as are immediately mortal Those, 
it is granted, have not so much terror in them; 
but the pain* I challenge you to assuage are 
such as I beheld my very good friend grappling 
with, that worthy and obliging person, Cneius 
Octavius, son to Marcus, and that neither once nor 
twice, nor by twinges, but by very frequent and 
tedious returns. It makes me shrug when I call 
to mind the agonies which he suffered. Such an 
inflammation had overspread his whole body, that 
you would have thought the flame was just ready 
to blaze out. All this while he felt not the worst 
of evils ; and although I could perceive him sensible 
of the anguish, yet was he by no means a man in 
misery, as he must have been, if his life had been 
all along taken up with pleasure and wantonness. 
In good earnest, you surprise me when you remark 
that the most pungent pains are the soonest over, 



114 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

and the most lasting the lightest ; because experi- 
ence has taught me that sometimes the fiercest pains 
may be very lasting; and if they could never be so, 
that until you are won to virtue by her own essen- 
tial charms, you cannot be duly qualified to sup- 
port yourself under those pains ; for fortitude has 
her directions, I should say, her laws, to embolden 
and confirm us against all insults of pain, which 
would otherwise unman us. And upon this ac- 
count it is, that we contract a moral torpitude, not 
by being sensible of pain, for that we cannot always 
avoid, but by our impatience under it, when, like 
Philoctetes, 

To the wild waste our shrieks and plaints we vent, 
And teach the rocks in echoes to relent. 

Let Epicurus be transformed for a little while into 
Philoctetes, and try how he can behave himself in 
the shin of that Greek, Cui viperino morsu, 8$c. 

In whose distemperd veins the foamings Aoav 
Of viper's rage, and circulate his woe. 

What though the pain be most afflicting, it cannot 
hold long ! So it seems, for Philoctetes, it is sup- 
posed, had not lain already above ten years under 
ground. Yet still, si longus lev is, if it be chroni- 
cal, it cannot be violent, but has its times of inter* 
mission and , relaxation. That is not always true 
neither, and when it comes, what arc you the better 
for your relaxation, the image of your last anguish 



BOOK THE SECOND. 115 

sitting lively upon your memory, and tbat of the 
return of it upon your apprehension? But even 
then death is a certain remedy. And undoubtedly a 
very savory one ! But what become? then of 
your plus semper voluptaiis that every man may at 
all times - command a pred icy bf pleasure t 

For if he may, it is heinous advice when you point 
him out that remedy : and it were a great deal the 
better way to convince him what an unpardonable 
dejection of soul it argues to sink it into impotence, 
and lose ourselves under the discipline of pain. 
All your si gravis, brevis ; si longus, levis ; short y 
if not light ; if lasting, slight ; is but a chiming 
rhyming cordial at the best. But if you would 
effectually relieve and dispel a patient's pain, it 
must be done by the lenitives of true fortitude, 
magnanimity and patience. Let me repeat, what 
Epicurus himself (for I am still sticking as close to 
his skirts as I can) freely declared when he lay 
upon his death-bed ; and then judge whether his 
deportment and his rules were of a piece. 
Epicurus to Hermachus, wishing all health. I 
date these few lines to you upon that day of my 
life, which, though the last, I find not at all un- 
comfortable. The miseries I feel in my bladder 
and bowels are as excessive as possibly they can be. 
No question, excessive enough, upon supposition 
XhaX pain is the greatest evil; not else, lie goes 
on — And yet I make all things easy to me by re- 
vetoing in my mind, of what a nexv account, and of 



115 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

what singular solutions of things, I have had the 
happiness to he the author. It remains, that, as 
all along from your tender years you have valued 
either Epicurus, or philosophy, you take Metro- 
dor us '«? children into your care and protection. 
Now cannot I, for my life, imagine that either 
Epaminondas or Leonidas made a better exit 
than this man ! though the former at the battle of 
Man tinea, where he had given the Lacedaemonians 
a defeat, having received a mortal wound, and 
finding himself draw near his end, first asked his 
soldiers whether he had lost his shield, and when, 
with tears running down their cheeks, they told. him 
he had not ; then he inquired, does the enemy Jty ? 
And so soon as that question was answered to his 
good liking, he gave order to draw the pike out of 
his body, and so, victorious and triumphant, 
spouted forth his life in a stream of blood : the 
latter, Leonidas, king of the Lacedaemonians, 
when at Thermopylae he had left his soldiers no 
other choice than that of an ignominious retreat, 
or a glorious excision, desperately charged the 
enemy with his three hundred Spartans, himself at 
the head of them. Something there is very noble 
and great in the fall of a brave general. But a 
philosopher grunts out his last between the blan- 
kets : as for instance ; that same Epicurus who 
thought he should purchase at least immortal ho- 
nours by leaving his friend the legacy of compen- 
sabatur cum summis doloribus latitia, I make all 



BOOK THE SECOND, 117 

things easy to me when I revoke in my mind, §c. 
This it is confessed, sounds philosophically, but 
still Epicurus breaks his shins over his own philo- 
sophy ; for either those writings and new discove- 
ries of his, the review whereof afforded him such 
matter of comfort, have no truth in them ; or if 
they have, they could afford him no comfort, as 
carrying in them no immediate relation to the bo- 
dy ; it being an avowed and constant problem with 
Epicurus, that nothing affords matter of joy or vex- 
ation further than as it effects the body. He says, 
that he delighted himself with ruminating upon 
what xvas transacted formerly. Was the body 
the principal in those transactions ? No, then it 
had been the remembrance of sensual satisfaction; 
and not a review of his own systems that gave him 
ease. Was the mind then immediately concerned? 
Neither is that possible, because, according to 
himself, the mind knows no other joy than that 
which directly affects the body. And then too, 
for what reason, Epicurus, could you think it 
worth your while to recommend Metrodorus's 
children to the care of Hermachus ? This was a 
peculiar and a noble act of friendship, or I know 
not what is so. But, I beseech you, was your 
body interested in it ? So that whatever we meet 
with throughout this highly- celebrated epistle of 
Epicurus, tilts and justles against his own prin- 
ciples. Thus he perpetually confutes himself, and 
leaves nothing besides his own probity and good 



118 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

behaviour to make bis writings bear a price, it 
being a clear indication of such an inbred and 
unmercenary goodness of temper as is wrought 
upon by the allurements neither of pleasure nor 
profit, when a man bestows his concluding moments 
in expressions and offices of respect and friend- 
ship, and particularly in making one friend guar- 
dian to another's children. When we see your 
own philosopher so very scrupulous at the point of 
death about fulfilling his duty, can we desire a 
more sufficient proof of what I assert, that virtue 
and probity are to be valued and courted for their 
own sakes? However, bating the incompatibleness 
of it all with its author's own tenets, this epistle of 
Epicurus's, rendered by me word for word from 
the original, is a piece which merits a much bet- 
ter place in my esteem than his last will and testa- 
ment, whewe he does not only play booty against 
himself, as before, but trespasses too, upon the gra- 
vity that became his beard. You must needs re- 
member how pertinent and how large a share of 
that book of his, which I mentioned before, is be^ 
stowed to make out, mortem nihil ad nos perti- 
fiere, that death touches not our copy-hold, be- 
cause absolute insensibility is the consequence 
of dissolution ; and an absolute insensibility ha3 
no manner of effect upon us. Here, by the 
way, he should have delivered himself with a 
little more art and perspicuity. He tells us, 
that absolute insensibility is the consequence of 



BOOK THE SECOND. 119 

dissolution, but forgets to let us know what he 
means by dissolution. Let it suffice again that 
I can guess at his meaning : I will only ask, why, 
if dissolution or death puts an end to sense, and 
so nothing succeeds that can affect us, he was 
pleased to provide so quaintly and precisely, that 
his heirs Amy noma ehus and Timocrates defray 
such expenses as Hermachus in his discretion 
should appoint for the annual celebration of Epi- 
curus's birth-day in the month Gamelim : Item, 
that monthly, upon the tzcentieth day of the moons 
age, in honour of hhnself and Metrodorus, they 
should find the expenses of a genteel entertainment 
for all such persons as had been his companions, 
and concurred with him in his philosophy. Such 
a codicil, if the testator had been a country gen- 
tleman of gaiety and good humour, might have 
passed well enough : but a sage adept, and one 
too that peculiarly prides himself in his natural 
philosophy, might have understood better things 
than to encourage the vulgar error of the return 
of birth-days. As if it were conceivable how the 
same numerical day, upon which a man is born, 
should come over again: or indeed, one exactly 
so circumstantiated, till at least, after the revo- 
lution of many thousands of years, all the heavenly 
bodies recover the very same points and positions 
which they had attained upon that day. • It is 
no n sense, the conceit of the world about birth- 
days. Well, but the world thinks otherwise : 



120 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

as if I did not know that ! But whether it does, 
or does not, wherefore, in the name of won- 
der, should Epicurus desire to be thus aggran- 
dized after his decease ? Why should he settle 
a revenue for that purpose in his will, when he 
had stamped it upon your minds for an oracular 
truth, that nothing after death can have any effect 
upon us ? I am afraid the man improved himself 
very little by his travels through his innumerable 
worlds and unmeasurable regions ! His own tutor, 
Democritus, that set him up, not to refer you to 
others, would never have made so false a step 
as this. But if he must have a day set apart and 
observed, the day whereon he came into the world 
was hardly so proper as the day whereon he first 
became a philosopher : saving, you will say, that 
unless he had been born, he could never have 
become such. No, nor unless bis great grand- 
mother too had been born before him ! Believe 
me, Torquatus, it is for the illiterate and obscure 
part of mankind to leave a salary for the com- 
memoration of their nativities. I will forbear 
making any reflections for quietness sake, upon 
the method you Epicureans have laid down to 
yourselves of passing the festival, and how you 
expose yourselves to the raillery of the wits upon 
that score. But this I will maintain, that it was 
much more incumbent upon his followers to have 
Epicurus's birth-day kept among themselves, than 
it was decent in him formally to order the sokmni- 



BOOK THE SECOND. 121 

xation in his will. To return to the suhject of 
pain, which was that we digressed from when we 
began upon dissecting the epistle : I will cast all 
that part of the controversy upon this short con- 
clusion, that man that is actually involved in the 
greatest of evils cannot be happy, at least so long 
as he is involved. But a ivise man is always 
happy, and yet sometimes in pain. Therefore pain 
is not the greatest of evils. Do not hope to turn 
the edge of this argument with your wonted sug- 
gestion, that it is the part of a wise man to dwell 
upon past felicities, and abdicate the remembrance 
of past afflictions. Teach me first how I shall re- 
tain or forget things, just as I have a mind to it. 
When Simonides, or whoever it was, profered 
Themistocles to render him a master in the art of 
memory : the art of forgetfulness, Themistocles 
told him, he zvould thank him for ; that is, hozv he 
might forget all that he ivished to forget, because 
he remembered already more than he desired to re* 
member. This was a very pithy and sharp reply. 
To enjoin us forgetfulness at large is very despot i- 
cal philosophy. If you please to consider, not 
Manlius himself could have set us a harder task 
than a down-right impossibility. And what if after 
all it is really a pleasure to recount those difficulties 
through which we have bustled ? What if the pro- 
verb which says, Jucundi acti labores, the siveetest 
calms are after storms ; or the tragedian, Euri- 
pides, if I can do him reason in Latin, for the 

m 



122 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

Epicureans have worn the Greek thread-bare, 
Suavis laborum est prceteritorum memoria. 

How lively are the joys we taste 
In recollecting troubles past ! 

What if these have more of truth and solid it j in 
them than all your ponderous instructions ? On 
the other hand, as for your bona prceterita, your 
past felicities, were they but of the right kind, 
such as, for example, Caius Marius's victories, 
(the reaction of which scenes in his imagination 
might very well support him, though an exile, a 
beggar, and laid up in a morass,) then would we 
attend to you, and shake hands with you ; being 
sensible, that were a wise man to forego the remem- 
brance of his own great resolves and enterprises, 
the happiness of his life would in some measure 
be defective and unfinished. But it is a recapitu- 
lation of pleasures formerly enjoyed, and those 
proper to the body, which refines the happiness 
of life in your account, unless you will admit 
other pleasures, and then you must forego your 
assertion, that all the pleasures of the mind are 
included in its communications with the body. 
If the revival of a past pleasure of the body upon 
the memory affects us with such delight, Aristotle 
was a blockhead for making such sport with that 
epitaph of Sardanapalus upon himself: Here lies 
the Assyrian monarch, that, when he left the 
world, carried off all his lusts and his pleasures with 



BOOK THE SECOND. 123 

him ; as if, quoth Aristotle, he had the art of em- 
balming them in the grave for his own use, though 
in his life-time he could never prolong the sense 
of them beyond those few moments the fruition 
continued : for all pleasure of the body is very 
swift, and, as he observes, momentary from its 
earliest commencement ; besides that the tokens 
it generally leaves us to remember it by are smart 
and pennance. How much more sincere the hap- 
piness of Africanus, while he addresses his coun- 
try in those incomparable lines, Desine, Roma, 
tuos hostes $c. No more, imperial Rome, thy 
rivals dread — 

Nam que tibi moaumenta mei peperere labores. 
With trophies hare my toils thy towr's adorned. 

He hugs himself upon the recollection of past 
drudgery, not of any departed pleasures, as you 
advise. He will not exercise his memory with 
any matters of meditation that respected the 
delight of the carcass', in which the Epicurean 
is so totally and irrecoverably immersed. Further; 
how will you convince us of that which you affirm 
so roundly, that all the pleasures and pains of the 
mind have an immediate dependance upon the 
pleasures and pains of the body ? I am now in 
conference with Torquatus, and to him I appeal 
for an answer to the question, whether he never 



124 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

met with any thing that purely by its own impres- 
sions gave him a present delight? I will not instance 
in worth and honesty, nor the idea of any virtue, 
but in mrtters which I have mentioned above of 
a much inferior significancy ; every oration or 
poem you either compose or peruse ; every piece 
of history or geography you consult ; nay, or any 
good statue or piece of painting; the recreations 
of the theatres and fields, or a pleasant rural re- 
treat, as, suppose Lucullus's : (perhaps if I had 
named your own, you would have took shelter 
there, and I might have fallen under correction 
for placing it in my catalogue of things remote 
from the substance of the body) but is ever a one 
of these proper to the essence of the body? Or 
does it affect you with pleasure immediately from 
itself? If you will stand to the former, much 
good may it do you with your obstinacy ; but if 
you will allow the latter, then you must throw all 
Epicurus's pleasure over-board. To come for- 
ward ; the pleasures and pains of the mind, you 
are confident, must be greater than those of the 
body, which is only sensible of what is actually 
present, whereas the mind moreover collects into 
itself things past and future. But how will you 
make it out, I pray, that another who rejoices 
upon my account is fuller of joy than myself? 
The pleasure of the body conveys an occasion of 
pleasure to the mind, and yet you will have it, that 



BOOK THE SECOND. 125 

the pleasure of the mind exceeds the pleasure of the 
body, that is, he that congratulates his friend is in 
happier circumstances than he that is congratulated. 
Then again, without discerning the consequence, 
you crown the happiness of your man of wisdom 
with the perception of the most exquisite intellec- 
tual pleasures infinitely surpassing those of the 
body. Which, if true, he will be subject withal to the 
perception of intellectual pains infinitely surpassing 
those of the body. So that sometime or other, 
your man of uninterrupted happiness becomes 
of necessity an object of commiseration. And 
this cannot be prevented, if pleasure and pain 
are to go for the two last and Jinal causes. 
And therefore, Torquatus, if we would get intelli- 
gence of a summum bonum adequate to the dignity 
of human nature, we must be looking out further, 
and leave pleasure for a property to the vouchers 
you call about you for the verity of your summum 
bonum, the brutes; though even these under the 
governance of instinct, very often set themselves 
of their own good purpose to toilsome tasks and 
enterprises, and make it evident that in the care 
they take to propagate their kind, and nurture their 
young, they serve other ends than those of pleasure. 
Many of them are addicted to the labour of coursing 
and wandering up and down; and others rather 
choose to embody themselves into their sort cf civil 
society. The winged world make frequent disco- 
veries of their apprehensiveness and memory ; nay, 



156 CICIRO OF MORAL ENDS. 

of a certain kind of discipline and piety among 
them. And if these animals practise such imita- 
tions of the virtues of the rational as are foreign to 
pleasure; is it not hard that man, of a nature so 
much superior to that of the beasts, shall be sup- 
posed to want all his distinguishing eminences ; and 
to respect virtue only as the tool of pleasure? 
Besides, if pleasure be the all of human good, 
the brutes have infinitely the advantage of us, who, 
without giving themselves the least trouble, crop a 
luxuriant variety of the fruits of the earth, as they 
are put into their mouths by the bounty of nature ; 
while we very often, with all the pains we can take, 
find it a difficult matter to glean a competency. If 
it were conceivable that men and brutes have the 
same summum bonum in common, how needless 
and superfluous must we reckon all those rules and 
instruments of art which we lay up and collect, all 
the ingenuous and liberal studies upon which we 
employ ourselves, and all those virtues which stand 
within the compass of our capacities ? Are they 
good for nothing but to stuff out pleasure ? Had 
the question been put to Xerxes, for what end and 
purpose he rigged out and manned so many sail of 
ships, kept in pay so ~many troops of horse, and 
companies of foot, dammed up the Hellespont, cut 
his passage through mount Athos, marched his 
forces over champion tracts of the sea, and rendered 
the continent navigable : lastly, why he made a 
descent with all these forces, and this incredible 



BOOK THE SECOND. 127 

violence, into Greece ; and his answer had been, 
that his errand was only to rifle Hymettus of its 
honey-combs ; without all question we should look 
upon the inducement to have been as weak as the 
attempts were astonishing. And so in the case of a 
wise man, well accomplished with all the particu- 
lars of a generous education and virtue, to say, 
that as the other led his granadiers a foot over* 
sea, and steered his fleets over mountains, he, 
for his part, makes within himself the tour of 
the universe — in order to suck a honey-comb 
— No, no, Torquatus, our beings were bestowed 
for designs and purposes far more excellent and 
sublime, as appears upon contemplating the se- 
veral perfections of the mind which in its fa- 
culty of remembrance, keeps a copious journal 
of ideas and events ; which by its divining power 
penetrates into the course and train of things 
to come ; which by a natural sense of shame bids 
us lay a restraint upon our appetites ; which 
ascertains the immutable laws of justice, and 
the rights of human society ; and which arms and 
establishes itself by a contempt of pain and death 
against all the most formidable oppositions of per- 
plexity and danger. Thus far extended lies the 
field of the mind's abilities and properties. Con- 
sult at leisure the senses and the fabric of your 
body ; you will see that these too not only concur 
with, but are subservient and instrumental to the 
interests of virtue. For peculiar to the body how 



12$ CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

many things are there preferable to pleasure; 
vigour, health, activity, symmetry of features and 
proportions ? And how many more peculiar to the 
mind ? Which by the most learned of the ancients 
was esteemed a celestial ray of the divinity itself. 
In good truth were you to have your will, and 
pleasure to be our summum bonum, there is nothing 
which we should have reason to covet with greater 
earnestness than to have all our senses, night and 
day, incessantly solicited by the sprightliest emo- 
tions and extacies of it. Now the animal that 
could be satisfied to lie thus dissolved from sun- 
rising to sun-setting, with what face does he assume 
to himself the definition of a man ? And yet the 
cyrenaicks are such animals prof est ; and so 
(which your modesty, poor men ! will not allow you 
to be) are consistent with themselves. Further; 
let me refer you, not to the more important exer- 
cises neither, which among our forefathers were 
made necessary to preserve a man from the impu- 
tation of idleness and insignificancy, but to the 
lesser and purely ornamental improvements of ge- 
nius ; was it, suppose you, for ends of pleasure, 
that Phidias, Polycletus, Zeuxis followed their oc- 
cupations ; not to say that Homer, Archilocus, 
and Pindar plied the muse? Shall a mechanic 
propose worthier ends to himself when he is hand- 
ling his chisel or his pencil, than a man of charac- 
ter and authority when he is forming honourable 
and great designs? Now then, to what origin 



i 



BOOK THE SECONB. l%9 

shall we ascribe this error of yours, which has met 
with so general a reception? That is as easily known 
as this proposition, Whoever makes pleasure the 
summum bonum consults the meanest of his pozvers 
xvhich are his appetites, instead of attending to 
the rational and discursive. And therefore it 
may be seasonably demanded, how the gods (for 
that there are such beings yourselves confess) having 
not the seat of pleasure, flesh and blood, can be 
capable of happiness ? Or if they may be happy, 
though destitute of corporal pleasure, why will you 
not grant also that a wise man may spin his own 
happiness out of his own mind ? Examine the 
characters recorded, not by Homer, of his heroes, 
nor by others of Cyrus, Agesilaus, Aristides, The- 
mistocles, Philip, Alexander, but of our domestic 
worthies, and in particular those of your own fa- 
mily. There was no man went beyond him in the 
art of screwing up his pleasures you will find ne- 
ver makes a part of the encomium. As little to 
the same effect run the inscriptions of monuments ; 
witness that over the gate there — Uno ore cuz plu- 
rimce consentiunt gentes populi primarium fuisse 
virum — to whose memory not a fezv whole nations 
dedicate this testimony, that he was inferior no 
way to the best of his fellozv-citizens. And is it 
supposeable, than when so many nations clubbed 
this testimony to Calatinus, they meant only, that 
nobody had a happier hand and skill at contriving 
and compounding his pleasures ? Or what if we 

s 



ISO CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

should stroke our young people on the head, and 
tell them we conceive a good hope and opinion of 
them, when they betray an inclination and resolu- 
tion to prostitute themselves and all their actions 
to their own private interests ? Can any thing be 
more apparent than what disorder and confusion 
such encouragements must bring into the world ? 
Seeing they would effectually put a stop to all en- 
tercourses of benefits and obligations, and so untie 
the bands of public unity and agreement; it being 
so far from a benefit, that it is down right usury 
and stock-jobbing, when one man takes interest 
for what he accommodates another with, and conse- 
quently he that supplies me upon those terms, 
brings me under no manner of friendly obligation. 
If pleasure is to rule the roast, farewell, a long 
farewell to the very brightest of virtues. Conver- 
tibly ; when the principle of honour and honesty 
is shut out of doors, I cannot understand what 
should hinder even a man of wisdom from letting 
into the room of it a thousand villanies and vices. 
To draw to a conclusion ; (for it were tedious and 
endless to prosecute the dispute as far as it will 
run) that is the only true and meritorious virtue, 
it is certain, which blocks up the very avenues of 
pleasure : whereof your own sense of things will 
satisfy you much better than I can. Turn your 
thoughts into yourself, and be determined by your- 
self, whether you should rather choose to pass all 
the stages, of life in a stream of perpetual pleasures 



BOOK THE SECOND. 131 

and that tranquillity of indolence which we hear of 
so often, not forgetting the other branch which 
(were it not impossible) you would incorporate into 
your happiness, an absolute unapprehensiveness 
of future pain ; or, like yourself, the business of 
whose life it has been to relieve and protect the 
helpless, and to do mankind all the good that lay 
in your power, to go in quest of Herculean labours 
and hardships (cerumnce) the tragical word, which 
(no affront to the god that underwent them) our 
progenitors made use of to signify those labours, 
which at the same time they thought challenged 
every man's imitation. And therefore I should 
next ensnare you with a very vexatious question, 
but 1 am afraid lest, when provoked you should 
affirm, that by all the operose and mighty services 
which Hercules himself did the world, his only in- 
tent was to force his way to pleasure — Here I gave 
over speaking, and Torquatus told me, if he 
pleased he could repay me in my kind, but first 
he would take some opportunity to discourse an 
old acquaintance or two that were greater pro- 
ficients and masters of the argument than himself. 
You mean, said I, the deserving and learned pair, 
Syro and Philodemus. You have hit upon them, 
said he. But for the present, said I, Triarius is to 
stand forth and be our umpire. That w r ere a 
good one indeed ! replied Torquatus, and laughed. 
As for yourself, you treat us with civility ; but he is 
the veriest vlxin of a stoic — And hereafter, said 



132 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

Triarius, you will find me much altered for the 
worse. I have hoarded up all that was urged 
against you, and so soon as ever your complice* 
have made you tight again, look to it, I shall try 
my strength upon you. And so we broke up t* 
rest ourselves. 



CICERO 



OF 



MORAL ENDS 



BOOK III. 



The business of the foregoing book, my Brutus, 
has been to take down the pretensions of pleasure, 
and make her truckle to dignity and greatness of 
mind; and that I have done this effectually even 
pleasure must acknowledge, if left to herself, and 
not allowed any, or at least, not a very perverse 
and incorrigible, council. For shame she can per- 
sist no longer in her defiances to virtue, no longer 
magnify that which is only grateful to the senses 
above that which is honest and honourable, or those 
enjoyments which glitter upon our corporeal organs 
above a sober and a steady, firm disposition of 
soul. Now then it is time to take leave of the 
syren, bequeathing her this caution, that she never 
more let us catch her sporting out of her own roy- 
alty, and that so serious and solemn an argument 
as the present one, be no more set upon and 
detained by the wanton invportunacy of her blan- 
dishments. Seeing therefore pleasure is so far from 
being the summum bonum, and indolence at as great 



134 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

a distance, the same objections in a manner lying 
against both, we must launch out again in search 
of our summum bonum, taking this along with us, 
that there can be no such thing, unless virtue, the 
great excellency of all, makes up a good part of it. 
So that the controversy in which I am now going 
to engage the stoics, must be managed with greater 
intention and a closer address than that which hap- 
pened with Torquatus ; not as though I proceeded 
carelessly then, but the common- places and sug- 
gestions of your advocates for pleasure are, at best, 
but very shallow and unartificial; as themselves 
are by no means quaint and subtle disputants, nor 
qualified to create an adversary much trouble. 
Epicurus, for one, has pronounced it unnecessary 
to come to any ratiocinations in reference to pleasure, 
because the senses are the proper judges of it, and 
we need go no further for instructions concerning 
it than to their insinuations. On which account it 
was, that as Torquatus went through his part of the 
dispute with an easy plainness, avoiding all intri- 
cacies and sophistical fetches, so I have endea- 
voured to answer him with an equal clearness and 
facility : whereas, I need not tell you, the stoics 
affect such methods of disputing as may best hamper 
and impose upon us, of which method we stand 
more in danger than the Greeks, because we have 
a new set of words to coin for the explication of 
a new set of notions. Nor will any man that is 
tolerably tinctured with learning make a wonder of 



BOOK THE THIRD. 135 

this, well-knowing that the professors of every dis- 
tincmishing and uncommon art assign their terms 
of art according as the instruments and exigences 
proper to each art require the use of those terms. 
Thus the logicians and natural philosophers have a 
language to themselves made up of words which 
are not in familiar use among the Greeks. The 
geometricians, musicians, and grammarians observe 
their several idioms and dialects. Nay, the rhe- 
toricians themselves, though the substance of their 
art lies wholly in judicial and declamatory plead- 
ings, word their own rules in their own forms, and 
in the livery of their own appellatives. To step 
over these polite and liberal arts, the machanics 
could never make any thing of their manufacture, 
did they not invent such names of things for them- 
selves as no body else understands. Even in an em- 
ploy so unelegant and rustic as that of agriculture, 
whatever has any relation to it, or province in it, 
has received its proper name. And therefore it 
were strange if philosophers might not make the 
same bargain for themselves, seeing philosophy is 
no less than the art of living, and ordinary modes 
of expression will not serve a man's purpose when 
he treats upon that subject. Yet have none of them 
so much abounded in terms, as the stoics. Zeno, 
the founder of the sect, brought nothing new into 
play except words. And if Greece has so far in- 
dulged her most eminent scholars as that when 
they had sprung a new notion they should dress it 



156 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

in new words, notwithstanding the supposed ferti- 
lity of their language ; certainly a Romany and the 
first that has made such an attempt in his mother- 
tongue, may very plausibly claim the same privi- 
lege : and yet, having first represented it as a 
grievance either that the Greeks or those of our own 
people who have revolted to them, should scan- 
dalize the Latin tongue as if it were scanty and 
barren, and not indeed more copious than theirs ; 
I must confess it will cost my brain some pangs 
before I can make as authentic Latin of the terms 
adapted to their arts and hypotheses, (not to men- 
tion any of our own,) as good Latin, I say, as the 
general titles delivered down to us from our fore- 
fathers, of philosophy, rhetoric, logic, grammar, 
geometry, music. Not but names might have 
been found for all these in the Latin tongue ; how- 
ever since use has made them so, we will accept 
of these names for our own. Thus much may 
suffice with relation to words and names. For as 
to the ideas themselves whereof they are the signs, 
whether, my Brutus, I should venture to send 
my thoughts to such an exquisite philosopher, (and 
in so excellent a road of philosophy, as yourself,) 
I have been a long time unresolved, though well 
assured I were not to be forgiven if I presumed 
thus far, as pretending to make you wiser and 
more knowing. That never entered into my 
thoughts, my intention in the present address; 
being not to inform you in those parts of knowledge 



BOOK THE THIRD, 13f 

in which no body is more conversant than Brutus, 
but to repose and shroud myself under your name 
and authority, and because I am sure to find you 
a fair arbiter, as well as a great proficient in these 
philosophical disputes. Having promised thus 
much I shall now bespeak your wonted attention, 
and your impartial judgment upon the merits of 
an argumentive contest which was managed against 
me by your uncle, that incomparable, that more 
than sublunary man. Being, you must know, 
at my country-seat and having occasion to make 
use of some books that were in the library of Lu- 
cullus, then a child, I went to his villa myself to 
fetch them, as I ordinarily did ; where whom 
should I cast my eye upon but Marcus Cato seated 
in the library with volumes of stoical authors piled 
up round him. And this was no more than suit- 
able to his love of reading, so very vehement and 
constant, that never concerning himself for the 
idle reflexions the populace made upon him, he 
would sit conning-over his lesson in the senate- 
house, till such time as the senators were all come 
together, but never so as to neglect the public 
business and proceedings. By which you may 
guess what a gormandizer of folios he was (for- 
give the indecency of the word) when he had got 
the opportunity of such a v acation, and the con- 
veniency of such a noble collection. No sooner 
had we spied one another but he quitted his seat, 
and according to customary preliminaries upon a 

T 



138 CICERO OF MORAL END5. 

sudden encounter, What, says he, brings you hither? 
I suppose from your country-home, where I had 
certainly been with you before now if I had known 
of your arrival. Why yesterday, said I, the city 
was all taken up and in distraction with the thea- 
trical entertainments that were exhibited ; so I 
took that opportunity of leaving it in the evening, 
and am now come hither upon my own errand, 
which is to carry back with me a parcel of books 
for my present use. By the way, methinks it is 
pity, Cato, that our little Lucullus is not better ac- 
quainted yet with all this vast treasure he is master 
of. I would have him persuaded to look upon this 
as the best-furnished apartment in his house For 
1 have a hearty love and tenderness for him, and 
therefore hope you will remember how much it is 
your duty to breed him up to the pattern of his 
father, of our old friend Caepio, and of yourself his 
near relation. You will perceive I have reason 
for my solicitude, as you cannot but be sensible 
how much I once honoured the person, and still 
reverence the memory of Caepio, verily believing 
that were he now alive we should have him among 
the first-rate supporters of the common-wealth ; 
and by what an entire friendship and concurrence 
of sentiments I was wedded to that mirror of excel- 
lence Lucullus, who stands at this time in idea 
before me. You are highly to be commended, 
said Cato, for the regard you shew to the memory 
of those two persons, and the affection you bear 
to the young successor of the family that remains, 



BOOK THE THIRD. 139 

especially considering they both by will appointed 
you a share in the guardianship of their children. 
Nor shall I be wanting to that duty whereof you 
admonish me, neither must you in assisting me to 
discharge it. And let me tell you, the youth gives 
us already very pregnant intimations of a sweet and 
modest disposition and a large capacity of soul. 
But then you may remember how little a while 
since he came into the world. 1 do so, said I, 
and yet account this a proper season for him to be 
trying at those introductory studies and improve- 
ments, which the more haste he makes to perfect 
himself in, the better and the sooner will he be 
qualified to step into greater affairs. Of this matter, 
said Cato, we shall be obliged frequently and on 
set-purpose to confer and deliberate. At present, 
if you please, let us choose each his seat, which 
we did, and so far satisfy my curiosity as to tell 
me what books they can be which you, that have 
so good a study of your own, are come hither for ? 
Some Aristotelian treatises : I am sure to meet 
with them here, and design to take them home with 
me to bestow that leisure upon, which you and I, 
you know, can command but seldom. And are 
there, said he, no hopes of your conversion to 
stoicism ? No, not of Cicero's, who had always all 
the reason he possibly could have to admit nothing 
good besides virtue? Not more reason neither, 
said I, than there is for your not affixing new names 
to things when we are both agreed upon the things 



140 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

themselves. For the difference between us is not 
in the principle , but wholly in the expression. Par- 
don me there : said lie, as often as you make any 
thing desirable and a real good beside that which 
is precisely honestum (honest honourable and vir- 
tuous) you totally eclipse and for ever supplant 
what is such. Loftily and majestically asserted ! 
But then carry it along with you, Cato, said I, that 
even Pyrrho and Aristo, though they stand up for 
an exact parity in the goodness of things, talk with 
as much ostentation as you can do for your life. 
May a body enquire what is your opinion of them ? 
What is my opinion ! said he; it is this, that all the 
good, great, just, and virtuous members of our 
common- wealth, whether known to us by fame or 
in person, who exclusively of the advantages of 
learning, and purely upon the sincerity of their 
intentions have acquitted themselves like gallant 
and glorious men, were much more happily in- 
structed by the dictates of natural reason than any 
philosophy in the world, which had taught them to 
reckon upon any thing as good or ill, beside moral 
honesty or turpitude, could have instructed them. 
All the other schemes of philosophical institution 
are some less, others more valuable : but in short, 
I am so far from allowing that any discipline 
whatsoever extending the denomination of good or 
evil to any thing remote from the region of moral 
virtue, can conduce to the rectifying and advancing 
of human nature, that I am sure it must debauch 



BOOK THE THIRB. 141 

it, there being left us no means of proving happi- 
ness of life to be the effect of virtue, when once 
we have surrendered this proposition, virtue is the 
only good. And if happiness of life be not the 
effect of virtue, where is the need to busy ourselves 
about any such thing as philosophy? If unhappi- 
ness is incident to a wise man, as great as is the 
glory and reputation of virtue, I do not see what 
it has for which we should value it. All this, Cato, 
said I, you might have urged had you been pupil 
to Pyrrho or Aristo, and as much to the purpose, 
for these two, you know well enough, determine 
virtue to be not only the sovereign good, but the 
sole, and that is what yourself would have. And 
if it hold, the other consequence you are zealous 
for is as necessary, that every wise man's happiness 
is constant and continual. So that it lies upon 
you to receive as your favourites those philosophers 
and their opinion. Soft and fair ! said he : to the 
province of virtue it belongs, the singling out and 
defining of what is most conformable to the mea- 
sures of nature. And therefore, as the parties 
aforesaid have reduced all things to a level of in- 
difference, and so made them equally eligible, they 
have struck at the very vitals of virtue. Excel- 
lently observed, said I, but while nothing passes 
with you for good but mere virtue and honesty, 
suppose you a stoic has a better pretence to abro- 
gate the discriminating properties of other things ? 
I know not, said he, what you mean by abrogating. 



14$ CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

I think I leave them as I found them. Be virtue, 
said I, or honesty, or moral rectitude, goodness, or 
decorum, (the greater variety of names we give it, 
the better we shall set forth its nature) be it our 
sole and single good, and no other will remain 
worthy of our. regard; as again, let moral evil, 
turpitude, dishonesty, dishonourableness, pravity, 
fiagitiousness, pollution, to explain this idea like- 
wise to the best advantage, let this be an evil by 
itself, and the only one we are in danger of, and 
then it is the only one from which we should 
be careful to preserve ourselves. You take me 
up, said he, before I am down, foreseeing what 
more I was designing to add ; and therefore not to 
try my teeth upon your scraps of argument, I will 
rather with your approbation spend a portion of 
those hours we have now to spare, in giving a com- 
plete account of Zeno's and the stoical philosophy. 
It will do mighty well, said I, and go a great way 
toward expediting a due conclusion of our debate. 
Now then to make an experiment, said he, for the 
stoical hypothesis is full of perplexing difficulties 
and obscurities ! The new terms which they sig- 
nify their new notions by, though in process of 
time they are become familiar and trite, appeared 
novel and strange to the Greeks themselves ; and 
therefore well may they look aukward and uncooth 
in Latin. Trouble not yourself, said I, about 
that. Zeno took the liberty of expressing those 
new thoughts which presented themselves by words 



BOOK THE THIRD. 143 

as unknown ; and shall Cato be denied the same 
privilege ? Not that it will be requisite to do like 
a pedantic translator, when a word either more or 
less in use might be had exactly opposite to the 
sense, to squeeze the words in the translation, one 
by one, out of the words of the original. When- 
ever I am brought to such a pinch, my way is to 
render by a circumlocution what the Greeks have 
throw r n into a single word. Or if a man can- 
not pick out a proper Latin word, I will by no 
means debar hrrn from taking the Greek. It 
were hard if we might call a horses s harness 
ephippia, and the drunkard's jolly full bowls 
acratophora ; and yet must not instead of proepo- 
sita and rejecta, words that signify things compa- 
ratively eligible, or not at all eligible, substitute from 
the Greek proegmena, and apoproegmena, notwith- 
standing that pr&posita and rejecta will serve as 
well. I thank you, said he, for the succours you 
have lent, and shall adopt the two Latin words you 
recommend, requesting you to set me forward when 
you find me at a stand for want of any other. 
The bold, said I, are fortunes darlings : however 
I will second you with all my strength. Only make 
haste and begin, for it is a divine one and the very 
best we could have chosen, that exercise for which 
we are preparing, Then he set out : That every 
living creature is from its nativity (whence begins 
the philosophical epoch) instigated and compelled 
by the constitution of its being, to love it, and en- 



144 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

deavour its own safety and preservation ; to take 
a pleasure in every thing that may contribute there- 
unto ; to keep as far off as it can from its own dissolu- 
tion, and whatever may further it ; is a position esta- 
blished among the men of my party, and that upon 
the evidences which infants give in, before they 
have yet scarce tasted of pleasure or pain, by reach- 
ing after what they think will be beneficial to them, 
and turning away from what they fear will incom- 
mode them. And this they would never do, were 
they not well pleased with their own natural con- 
dition, and afraid of a change. Neither can it be ac- 
counted for, how they should be desirous of any 
thing at all, if they were not conscious of their own 
existence and perceptions, and endeared to them- 
selves and their own interest by that consciousness. 
And thus the origin of desire rises out of the prin- 
ciple of self-love : among the natural springs and 
sources whereof there are very few stoics who rec- 
kon pleasure. The reason is, because if pleasure 
be listed in the number of those things which na- 
ture has made primarily desirable, we should be 
thereby powerfully induced to pursue very lewd 
and unjustifyable courses ; and to me this is a most 
satisfactory reason. Then for a sufficient one, 
why, in course, we are so kindly affectioned toward 
those things which nature has inscribed of prime 
account, we have it here, that as for the parts of 
the body, there is no one but if left to his choice, 
would rather his own should be entire, perfect, aad 



BOOK THE THIRD. 145 

well-limbed, than defective, unserviceable, distor- 
ted. And as for ideas and right conceptions of things, 
(perhaps you had rather have me say xoLTaT^-tyeig, 
and may understand that better) these, as being 
so many vehicles and subjects of truth, we sup- 
pose to be very acceptable to our minds upon their 
own account. And of this we receive a convinc- 
ing proof from the behaviour of young children, 
who, as little as they gain by it, rejoice and exult, 
if at any time without the help of others they 
have compassed a new invention or discovery. 
Furthermore, arts and sciences are in our esteem 
worthy for their own sakes to be propagated 
amongst us, not only because considered at large 
they have something in them that deserves cultiva- 
tion, but also, because as well the deductions as 
the principles upon which they proceed are ra- 
tional and methodical : and with us it goes for an 
undoubted truth, that there is nothing so contrary 
and detestable to human nature as to yield our as- 
sent to an apparent falsity. The limbs or parts 
of the body are of txco sorts ; either such as nature 
has adapted to proper uses and functions, as the 
hands, the legs, the feet, and the internal organs ; 
and about the various offices and operations of 
these the physicians themselves Gannot agree among 
themselves ; or such as have no manifest use, but 
serve only to beautify, as the peacock's tail, th& 
variegating plumes upon the neck of a dove, and 
the tuts and beard of a man. I am sorry that my 

¥ 



146 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

present matter will not admit of more diffusive and 
lively periods. We are got among the first general 
branches of division in nature, and to them all 
exuberancy and fluency of expression is foreign, 
not that otherwise I should be very studious of it. 
Though it is impossible but. that when we are dis- 
coursing upon subjects of main importance, expres- 
sion will force its way, and bring along with it both 
weight and lustre. I deny not, said I, but you 
are so far in the right ; and yet if what is attempted 
upon a material subject, runs easy and clear, the 
manager, in my opinion, has performed his part 
to admiration. It is for every school-boy to spread 
his treasure of rhetorical foliages upon a thesis of 
this kind. A man of learning and sense will study 
and endeavour all he can to discourse of it with 
plainness and perspicuity. Having then, continued 
he, premised as much as is sufficient concerning the 
aforesaid principles, we shall now advance to cer- 
tain consequences which unavoidably result from 
them. The division that comes next in my way 
is of things into astimabilia and inestimabilia, 
those that are truly valuable and those that arc 
not. That which is truly valuable is the same, as 
I conceive, with that which is consonant to nature, 
or by means of which such valuable properties 
accrue to something else as render it very well wor- 
thy of our choice. This valuableness Zeno calls 
af/a. And that which is not truly valuable is just 
the contrary to that which is valuable. Now this 



BOOK THE THIRD. 147 

foundation being laid, that those things which are 
exactly agreeable and calculated to the rules of 
nature, are to be closed with and accepted for 
themselves, and the contrary to be rejected ; the 
first office or duty (for so I interpret the word 
xo&ijxov) is to look to, and secure ourselves in the 
condition and constitution that is proper to our 
species ; the second, that we fasten upon those 
things which hold an exact conformity with the 
methods and order of nature, and that we guard 
a gainst the contrary. And after we have passed this 
choice and refusal, then follows thirdly, Cum officio 
selectio, choice in conjunction and union with duty, 
and this choice a. standing and perpetual one, ever 
fixed and constant, and perfectly accommodated to 
the nature of things. And here we have the first 
emergency and notice of something really good, 
and our first obligation to engage ourselves to those 
things which are consonant, to the measures of na- 
ture. But when we have run a longer thread of know- 
ledge, (evvoiot in the original) and beheld the rela- 
tion of duties to one another, and the harmony of 
all in consort, we rate them far above those things 
which we had reckoned upon before, and thus are 
we brought by knowledge and reason to conclude 
that the great summum bonum of man, which de- 
serves to be the chief subject of our praises, and 
the chief object of our desires, stands upon the 
ground-work of that o/AoXoy/a, as the stoics call 
it, or if you please, in our language, convent- 



148 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

entia (coincidence and harmony) since in this 
lies that bonum or good, to which all virtuous 
and worthy actions must be referred, and the 
good of "virtue itself, which, though a subsequent 
good, is nevertheless recommended purely upon its 
own authority and excellency ; whereas the prima 
naturae, the things which offer themselves first in 
order of nature, are none of them irrespectively 
and for themselves to be prized. And because 
upon the initio, naturae, the first general provisions 
in nature, the duties we were mentioning subsist, 
Jhey are to be looked upon as subordinate to them 
and dependent of them ; so that in the upshot, the 
centre to which all duties tend, is that of the prin- 
cipia naturae, the first general principles in nature. 
Not that these constitute the last good of all, the* 
first analogies and coherences in nature, not includ- 
ing virtuous actions or practices, which, according to 
what I observed before, are the fruits and conse- 
quences of them. Still these actions are among 
those things which hold an exact conformity with 
the measures of nature, and engage us to bid higher 
for them than for any of the rest. Now here to 
forestal a mistake which some people may be apt 
to run upon, as if we introduced a couple of ultima 
bona, utmost goods, let it be remembered that when 
a man is to dart a spear, or shoot an arrow at a 
white, which in the parallel answers to our ulti- 
mum in bonis, (last and furthest good) he must 
neglect no motion or condition which may bring 



BOOK THE THIRD. 149 

his weapon to the mark, and thus the same person 
does whatever is necessary to be done, to the end 
that he may hit within the white, and likewise to 
the end that no means may be omitted to render 
him successful, with this difference still between 
the two ends, that the former is, as the summum 
bonum in life, the last and outermost, but the latter, 
namely, that nc means may be omitted to make the 
flight prosperous, does not import a good to be 
prized and desired for itself, but only to be chosen 
and used as a conducive one. And in regard all 
offices and duties whatsoever, arise out of the first 
general principles in nature, it must needs be that 
human wisdom results also from those principles. 
Neither is it more wonderful that these general 
principles should conduct us to wisdom, and that 
we should set more by wisdom afterwards, than 
before by these general principles that brought her 
and us together, than what is known every day, 
that he who is handed by another into the acquaint- 
ance of a third person, comes to esteem the third 
person above him to whom he owes the knowledge 
of him. The members and organs of our body are 
evidently framed and disposed for a stated and 
uniform discharge of the offices and operations 
proper to the animal life. In like manner the in- 
clinations and propensities of the mind (signified 
in Greek by bppa\) and so reason too, be it never 
so perfect and improved in us, are allotted us not 
for every use we can make of them, but only for 



150 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

certain uses respecting the due government of our 
lives. For life ought to be as little left to itself, 
and as much tied to rules as a stage-player in his 
action, or a dancing-master in his steps. And a 
life shaped by these rules we call a well-ordered or 
a rational course of Fife. The art of governing, or 
the science of medicine has not, I conceive, so 
near an affinity to wisdom as what I compared it 
to before, the gestures of a player, or the motions 
of a dancing-master, because it immediately con- 
sists in the exercise of itself, and is not to be re- 
duced into act before it is consummate. Although 
the comparison will not hold throughout between 
wisdom and these two attainments, because let the 
performances of a player or a dancing-master be 
never so just and excellent, yet they do not singly 
take in the whole oeconomy and complement of 
the respective arts. Whereas the entire substance 
of virtue comes under our particular xaro^w^ara, 
recte facta, good and rational acts. For it is pe- 
culiar to wisdom in contradistinction to all other 
arts and accomplishments whatsoever, that it is to 
itself all in all, and all in every part. It were also 
a mere madness to pitch a parallel between the end 
of the art of governing or of the science of medicine, 
and the end of wisdom ; inasmuch as it is the busi- 
ness of wisdom to fortify and rectify the mind, and 
raise it above the impressions and reach of external 
accidents, to effect which exceeds the province of 
all other arts and sciences : as nobody can be thus 



BOOK THE THIRD. 151 

happily disposed, till he has passed it into an infal- 
lible dictate, that whatever touches not upon the 
confines of virtue or vice is in its own nature 
imcomparatively indifferent. And now let me 
entertain you with a taste of those choice infer- 
ences which flow from the premisses. That it is 
the last and final good of man to take such mea- 
sures of life as quadrate with the order and the con- 
stitutions of nature, is proved ; and that the life of 
every wise man must be fortunate and happy, 
independent, never entangled, and always free and 
furnished, unavoidably follows from that position. 
By the way you may have taken notice, I presume, 
that when I speak of the last or fnal, or principal 
good, (or end instead of the two former, last, or 
final good) I mean the same by it as the Greeks 
by the word rkhog. Then as to that grand 
article that we should esteem virtue, and no- 
thing else to be our good, (a direction that 
reaches as far into the condition of our lives, and 
into life itself, as into that kind of philosophy which 
we are now considering) I might fetch a large com- 
pass of rhetoric, and set out the praises of it at 
length in the choicest turns of speech, and the 
most commanding periods, but that I postpone 
them all to the quick and girding conclusions of the 
stoics ; as thus, whatever is good is praise- worthy ; 
whatever is praise-worthy is matter of virtue and 
honour; therefore whatever is good, is matter of 
virtue and honour. Can any thing be more close- 



152 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

ly and fairly inferred ? There is nothing to be 
found in the sequel but what is the genuine pro- 
duct of the premisses. The major ox first proposi- 
tion, I know, is usually denied ; as if it were not 
true, that whatever is good is praise- worthy (for 
nobody questions but that whatever is matter of vir- 
tue and honour is so.) But then how extravagant 
is it to suppose that any thing which is good is not 
desirable, or that that which is desirable is not 
pleasing, or that that which is pleasing is not wor- 
thy of our love, or that that which is worthy of our 
love is not worthy of our esteem and praises, and 
consequently matter of virtue and honour ? Again, 
it is not a life of misery or without felicity, but a 
life of real happiness that a man may boast of, and 
in such a life he is allowed to glory, which yet were 
not to be suffered if his life of happiness were not 
a life of virtue, and therefore both are the same. 
Neither is any one worthy of esteem and commen- 
dation, but upon the score of some significant claim 
which gives him possession of credit, honour, or 
happiness ; and what holds as to the man, holds 
a* to the life of the man. Consequently, if virtue 
and honesty are the characteristics of a happy life, 
nothing but what is matter of virtue or honesty 
may pass for good. To make sure work; let it 
once be granted, that pain is an evil; and then find 
me out a away, if you can, to settle, invigorate, and 
confirm the mind. As it is not in the power of 
any man, that accounts of death as an evil, not to 



BOOK THE THIRD. 153 

be afraid of it, nor, in general, to slight or be un- 
concerned at any mischief or evil, be it what it 
will. And when this is once admitted, which was 
never in this world contested, the next is a very 
natural superinduction, that a man of true greatness 
and bravery will afford contingencies and accidents 
of life no other consideration than that of scorn 
and contempt. Upon the whole therefore nothing, 
we see, can be an evil but what has in it an alloy 
of moral turpitude. Accordingly, it is the part of 
that great sampler of magnanimity, fortitude and 
contempt of the world (which if we cannot actually 
produce, we should at least be glad if we could) to 
rely upon himself: to be undismayed about any 
part of his life, and to have a good opinion of his 
own strength and condition, holding to this, with 
assurance, that a wise man can come to no harm. 
Which consideration alone makes it appear plainly, 
that nothing beside virtue and honour is goody and 
that a happy and a virtuous life are one and the 
same. I know very well what a variety and differ- 
ence of opinions there was among those philoso- 
phers that seated the summum bonum, or the last 
great good, in the mind, and how many abettors 
of their mistakes they have had. But, for my part, 
I that follow the masters who settle it all upon the 
virtues of the mind, in comparison of that opinion, 
as little attend to the doctrines of any of those 
three sects which representing virtue as unentire 
and abortive, pretend to patch it up either with 



154 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

pleasure or indolence, or the prima natural, (the first 
general constituents of human nature) as to theirs 
that saluting either pleasure for a Summum bonum, 
or indolence, or the prima natural, make a separa- 
tion between virtue and summum bonum. Beyond 
them all for paradoxes of absurdity, is that clan 
of your academics, who, notwithstanding they have 
determined the last empyreal good to consist in a 
life of speculation and science, that there is no 
real difference between one thing and another, and 
that a wise man cannot but be happy, because he 
strings all his circumstances upon the same thread ; 
yet bind it upon their wise-man as the presiding 
and most fundamental of his duties to bilk his own 
eyesight, and forswear all manner of assent* The 
replies which are made to this account of the mat- 
ter are, for the most part, much more prolix than 
so plain a case requires. For is it not clear, that 
unless we understand how to skim and drain off 
whatever is repugnant to the measures of nature 
from whatever agrees to them, it is a jest to look 
longer after any such thing as prudence, or so much 
as to talk of it respectfully ? So that having dis- 
patched the aforesaid hypotheses, and in them all 
others of the same complexion, we have now no 
other summum bonum left behind, unless it rests 
here, that we live under a judicious regard to the 
motions and emergences in nature, that we stand 
to her propositions, and abjure what crosses upon 
her ; in short, that we live up and according to her 



BOOK THE THIll». \55 

directions. The liriysvyi^ai^lv (as it is called by 
the men of skill) or advance and progress that is 
made in any specimen of any other art is subse- 
quent and expected. But wisdom is always born 
fall-grown, and every effect of it so complete and 
adequate in itself, as not to be capable of improve- 
ment, amounting to no less than that which we 
take to be truly valuable and desirable ; it being 
no less a misdemeanor to be sensible of any fear, 
or sorrow, or fleshly inclinations, though they are 
not complied with in practice, as to sell our coun- 
try, injure our parents, or disfurnish the temples, 
which are crimes of commission. And as these do 
not gather and grow into sins by little and little, 
but so soon as they are, are as great as they will be : 
so the exercise of any virtue implies an actual 
perfection of practice, not an ascending one. And 
now to explain what I mean by bonum or good, a 
word which makes such a figure in our present de- 
bate ; somewhat variously the philosophers have 
expressed themselves about it, though all their 
definitions run at last into an equivalency. I am 
for that of Diogenes, with whom bonum or good is, 
that whose essence is consummate, and the w^eKfi^a 
or advantage derived by it, he has defined to be 
either those influences, or circumstances, which 
that perfection of essence conveys. And forasmuch 
as the mind is the fountain and residence of all our 
notions, whether collected from experience, relative 
connexions, similitude, or by comparing reason 



J .56 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

with reason ; the last of these operations produces 
the knowledge of our good, the mind after having 
distinguished those things which are according to 
the measures of nature, mounting in a road of 

7 o 

rational collections, until it arrives at the compre- 
hension of its own good, which is of that nature 
that it neither admits of accession, nor intension, 
nor comparison, but is absolute and singular, and 
makes us know that it is such. As honey, the 
principal of all sweets, does not relish by virtue of 
any comparative, but of its own proper and speci- 
fic sweetness. In like manner the excellencies which 
make our bonum or good so valuable, are to be 
estimated not by quantity but by kind. Nor does 
our valuation (a§/a) though it should run ever so 
high, take it out of its proper kind, because it car- 
ries in it nothing of good or evil. Whence it fully 
appears that the estimate we pass upon virtue 
must not follow rules of proportion, but the de- 
finition of its essence. Next for the perturba- 
tions or passions of the mind, to the unwise the 
burthen and bane of their being, called in the 
Greek 7ro&7), which is as much as to say, distem- 
pers and indispositions, and so, perhaps, I might 
have translated it, were it not unusual to call com- 
passion or anger & disease, or had I not thought the 
sense of the word perturbation sufficiently disad- 
vantageous. These perturbations which are di- 
gested under four general heads, trouble of mind, 
fear, lust, and tJSoj^ according to the signification 



BOOK THE THIRB, 157 

the stoics have imposed upon it, equally applicable 
to the body and mind. Lcctitia we may render it, 
a lively and emphatical sense of pleasure within. 
These are so many unnatural fermentations to be 
accounted for from false opinion, and the levity of 
human nature, and lie out of a wise man's way. It 
is advanced by a great many other philosophers 
beside the stoics, that whatever comes under the 
notion of virtue is valuable and desirable upon 
its own account. This all philosophers are bound 
to assert, however they stand affected, except the 
three factions that leave virtue out of the summum 
bonum ; but the stoics especially, that leave all 
things out of the character of good beside virtue. 
And the reason why they do so, is obvious and 
evident, if it were no more than this, that though 
as to inconveniences and punishments he were, 
sure to be excused, there neither is, nor ever was 
any man yet, suppose his avarice and other desires 
and inclinations have governed him as uncontrol- 
lably as you please, but who would much rather 
have brought about his designs without than by the 
perpetration of a crime. So when we take pains 
to inform ourselves rightly of the concealed distri- 
butions, motions, and efficiencies in the natural 
world, as for instance in the heavenly bodies ; what 
advantage or lucre do we propose to make of our 
curiosity ? Or what wild man of the mountains or the 
forests could ever yet so damp the force of nature's, 
impulses within him, as not to reckon it worth his 



158 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

■while to converse with significant matters of sci- 
ence, but on the contrary to nauseate them, unless 
they yielded either his purse a stipend, or his senses 
a gratification f Who that so soon as he hears of 
the actions, the sayings, and the resolutions of 
those astonishing examples of true fortitude and 
every other virtue, our predecessors, whether the 
Africani, or (the man that takes up so much room 
in your thoughts and words) my great grandfather, 
or any of the rest, perceives not a mighty satisfac- 
tion diffused over his faculties ? Who that ever 
had an ingenuous education, and among people of 
worth and honour, but would abominate whatever 
is foul and unwarrantable as such, though the con- 
sequences of it were not disagreeable ? conceive 
a secret resentment at the sight of a libertine ? and 
be always out of conceit with little souls, tempo- 
rizers, fops, and triflers? If the dishonesty of an 
action is not in itself execrable and frightful ; what 
is there to tie us up from committing the most 
heinous facts, when countenanced by darkness and 
solitude? All this amounts not to the thousandth 
part of what I might offer upon this point, if there 
were occasion. I know of nothing more indis- 
putable, than that as virtue or moral excellency is 
for itself to be valued and desired, so vice or moral 
turpitude is to be hated and avoided. Further ; 
if I have now evinced it sufficiently that there is no 
other human good beside virtue and moral excel- 
lency, it necessarily follows that this moral excel- 



BOOK THB THIRD. 15$ 

lency is to be preferred before the means which 
are made use of to acquire it. And therefore as 
often as we affirm against folly, temerity, injustice 
intemperance, that we ought to beware of them 
because of the ill effects they bring; this must not 
be taken as contradictory to that other position of 
ours, that there is no other evil beside moral 
turpitude, the malignity of those effects not lying 
in the detriment which the body sustains from 
them, but in the immorality and viciousness of 
the action ; for so the word Tcaxia is better turned 
than by the word malitia, properly signifying malice. 
You are very happy, Cato, said I, in the elegance 
and expressiveness of your terms. Philosophy has 
been long accounted at Rome an exotic, and such 
is the subtilty and delicacy both of its matter and 
language, that we have hitherto despaired of weav- 
ing it into our mother-tongue ; and yet you find no 
trouble to latinize it, and make it a complete Ro- 
man. It is true, we have those that will discourse 
in Latin upon philosophical subjects, but then they 
never proceed in the way of divisions and dejini- 
tiofis, and only insist upon such particulars as stand 
explicitly ratified by nature. The questions upon 
which they try their skill are not at all involved ; 
and so wrought off with ease. Permit me there- 
fore to observe narrowly what you say, and to fix 
in my mind such new terms as you supply us with 
to help out our present controversy, because they 
will be serviceable to me in my turn. You sug- 



]()0 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

gested rightly, and like a master of Latin etymology 
m the opposition you were stating between "virtue 
and vice, the latter, as I apprehend, taking its name 
from vituperabile, because ?*eproach and accusation 
stick to its very essence, unless vituperabile may 
rather come from v it ium (vice;) and if you had 
made malitia (malice) of xaxia, it would have 
denoted according to our acceptation but one 
particular sort of vice ; whereas virtue and vice, 
as you have indefinitely opposed them, compre- 
hend the several species of either. We are 
now, continued he, upon the verge of a disqui- 
sition that has been prosecuted with mighty 
heats. The peripatetics, who being destitute of 
logic seldom argue closely, have thought it their 
best way to manage it with moderation and tender- 
ness. But your beloved Carneades, a singular good 
logician and orator, had well-nigh put us to our 
shifts. He was ever confident that the stoics and 
peripatetics, upon the question de bonis et malis, 
(of good and evil) disagreed not in their principles, 
but only in their terms. Now for my part I think 
it notorious that there is more than a verbal differ- 
ence between the two hypotheses. The stoics, 
I say, and the peripatetics vary not half so much 
in terms as in principles. Thus the peripatetics 
make every thing which they call good an ingre- 
dient in their composition of human happiness: 
whereas we maintain that a happy life is constitu- 
ted only of that which properly and by virtue of 



BOOK THE THIRD. l6l 

itself challenges our esteem. Again; if pain is an 
evil, what can be clearer than that a wise man, 
when he lies in torture upon the wheel, is no lon- 
ger happy? Now we, that have no notion of 
the evil of pain, have found a surer way to hold 
a wise man's happiness together in spite of the rack 
itself. And it is plain that, were it not for opi- 
nion and the vapours, in the nature of the thing we 
should never find this pain greater and that lighter. 
Else what makes that pain a scratch, when we come 
by it in the defence of our country, which is an 
anguish when the occasion is less honourable and 
important ? Another article wherein the peripate- 
tics dissent from us, is this. The peripatetics 
allow three kinds of things really good, and the 
richer allotment of advantages either of body or 
fortune falls to a mans share, the wider, they say, 
is his felicity, the accession of all such external pri- 
vileges making out the whole extent of human hap- 
piness with them ; so that if we were to come up 
to their terms, we must admit that the larger the 
inventory of his externals, the happier the man ; 
which we cannot by any means digest. For certain- 
ly if we deny altogether, that any supposed affluence 
or abundance even of the bona natural, (those things 
which nature signifies to be good,) add any thing to 
the blessedness or value of life ; we can never per- 
suade ourselves that our happiness receives any 
thing from externals, be their plenty and per- 
fection as great as you please. If wisdom and 

Y 



162 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

health be, both of them, things desirable, theft 
must both in conjunction be more desirable than 
wisdom alone ; and yet, notwithstanding both de- 
serve to be valued, in conjunction they are no more 
than equivalent to the first alone. For though we 
grant that health is a thing to be made much of, 
but not to be made free of the classis of bona, or 
things absolutely good; yet in competition and 
comparison with virtue we value it no more than 
a shadow. The peripatetics teach us another les- 
son, and affirm that a virtuous action which will not 
expose us to a present pain or loss, takes place of 
one that will. This now sounds very harsh in our 
ears, and why it does, you shall understand in the 
sequel. Mean while what think you of the pa- 
rallel between f the peripatetics and the stoics ! In re- 
spect of the final good we stand up for, all those 
foreign accommodations that relate to the body are 
like the glimmering of a lamp before the sun in the 
meridian, immediately vanished and absorbed ; a 
drop of brine lost in the iEgean sea ; a stiver laid 
up among Croesus's golden magazines ; or the 
length of a filed s leap deducted out of the number 
of leagues that lie between this place and the In- 
dies. The splendor of virtue extinguishes them, 
and the bulk, exuberancy, and extent of it over- 
bears and annihilates them. An opportunity (s\r 
xotigi'a) is not more itself though the allowance of 
time be never so liberal, because it cannot trans- 
gress its own duration. And so a right practice 



BOOK THE THIRD. 16*3 

(xolto f&coo-ig, as for xarofocopoL I would put rectum 
factum, a regular action) and the concurrence of 
moral principles, and the good of % conformity to the 
measures of nature are incapable of being augmen- 
ted. The case of these, and that former of an op- 
portunity are perfectly alike. And hence it is that 
the stoics have drawn off this doctrine, that a hap- 
py life of the length of half a span is as good, and 
ought to be as satisfactory, as one of a longer clue. 
The prime excellency of & slipper is to sit easy and 
handsome upon the foot, (I give you the old si- 
mile) which if it does, it is nothing to the purpose 
what size it is of, nor how many pair of the same 
size there are in the world. And thus if symmetry 
and opportunity make out the nature of any good, 
it is not to be multiplied into a plurality, nor ad- 
vanced by being stretched. And yet some peo- 
ple are so weak as to infer, that because a good 
state of health, when it stays with us long, is better 
than if it lasted but a little while ; therefore a long 
allowance of time for the cultivation and exercise 
of wisdom is rather to be wished for than a short 
one. Now they are to understand that our esti- 
mate upon health is determined from the cir- 
cumstance of continuation, but our estimate 
upon virtue from the circumstance of opportunity. 
And they might as gravely inculcate that it is better 
to die or be born, in a long-instant of time than in 
a short one. Some things though very transient 
are as much worth as others though very per ma- 



164 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS* 

nent ; but it is not every body that knows the dis- 
tinction. To come forward ; they who attribute 
unto the last and final good a possibility of increas- 
ing, if they will be consistent with themselves, 
must also maintain degrees in wisdom, and an ine- 
quality in the goodness or badness of any of our 
actions. We that conceive the final good to be 
incapable of additions, deny this. He that is over 
head and ears in a pool, though he should not be 
further than three inches below the surface, is as 
little in a condition to fetch his breath as if he were 
"at the bottom. A young puppy that is to have 
the use of his eyes within a day or two is as blind 
as another that was whelped an hour ago. In like 
manner, he that makes but a partial and an imper- 
fect progress in virtue is as wretched and forlorn 
as he that has made none. You may call these 
propositions mysteries, or paradoxes ; or what you 
please, but, sure I am, if my first principles are 
true and compact, and what I have now superin- 
duced altogether comports with them, there is no 
pretence for questioning the truth of them. When 
I say that any degrees of greater or less are foreign 
to the nature of "virtue and vice, do not mistake 
me, as if I denied that either the one or the other 
might be, as 1 may say, expanded and rarefied. 
Riches, our Diogenes conceives, may help us to 
pleasure and a good constitution, and be the vehi- 
cle of both ; but for the art of living well, or any 
other art, riches convey nothing of it to us, though 



BOOK THE THIRD. l6i 

they may convey us to it : that therefore wealth is 
as much a good as pleasure or a favourable consti- 
tution; that it is yet far from a consequence, 
because wisdom is a real good, therefore current 
coin must be so too : that whatever is not itself a 
real good cannot include that which is ; that our 
conceptions of things, which are the ground- work 
and materials of all art, naturally operate upon our 
inclinations ; and that for as much as riches are 
no real good, they cannot consequently include 
whatever may be called an art. And though this is 
rightly observed as to arts in general, yet there is this 
one thing peculiar to virtue, that it must be perpe- 
tually refreshed and exercised; which is not abso- 
lutely required in arts and sciences; as also that 
under virtue is comprehended an uniform constancy 
and steadiness in the tenor of a man's whole life ; 
but this is not of the substance of any liberal art 
or science. To go on with our distinctions, because 
were we to do, as Aristo has done, not distinguish 
between the nature of this and that, we could never 
methodize the conduct of life, nor understand the 
proper functions and administrations of wisdom ; 
in regard the severals, which respect or come into 
the management of life, would lie undistributed, 
and appear all equally eligible : passing therefore 
from the distinction between that which is abso- 
lutely good, or matter of virtue, and that which is abso- 
lutely evil or matter of vice, the stoics have settled 
another division of things, which, though they nei- 
ther make for nor against the happiness of life, yet are 



166 CICERO OF MORAL EtfDS, 






dissimilar and subordinate ; and these are either suck 
as are of some account, of ill account, or intermediate. 
Those which are of some account have something 
in them recommending and preferable, as health, 
senses perfect, indolence, a great character, money, 
and the like ; or else they are not properly prefer- 
able, and so stand intermediate ; and those which 
are of ill account, having something in them dis- 
commending and unacceptable, as pain, sickness, 
the want of any of our senses, indigence, ignominy, 
and the like; or else they are not properly unaccept- 
able, and so make the other branch of the inter- 
mediate. Hereupon Zeno rather than he would 
forego his distinction of 7rpo7jy/xlj/oi> and a.7roTpoY}y- 
pivov, took the liberty to disgrace his own copious 
language by bringing up those new terms, though 
we must be prohibited to enrich our scanty one, if 
you will give me leave to call it so. That I may 
make the meaning of these terms a little better 
understood, it will not be impertinent to tell you 
what Zeno had in his eye when he made the word 
vporiypivw. As it were absurd, says he, to talk of 
a sovereign prince being promoted to a dignity ; 
and places at court are not for him, but for the 
great men, his immediate inferiors : even so they 
are not the supreme but the secondary prerogatives 
of life, which I term 7rpoYiyix£m, product a (literally) 
things that obtain favour and promotion, as a7ro- 
TTgoyyiAeva, rejecta, things wherewith we are dis- 
pleased, unless we render both as before, prteposita 



BOOK THE THIRD. 1 67 

©r prcecipua, p refe rabies ; and rejecta, things 
disagreeable. So we do but understand one ano- 
ther, we ought not to be superstitious about words. 
Now then, for as much as that which is really our 
good is absolute aud superlative, the nature of that 
which is no more than a preferable can be neither 
good nor bad, but is aoiafyopov, what we may call 
indifferent, or something as well on this side 
insignificancy, as on this side the greatest signift- 
cancy. That such midling species of things either 
agreeable or disagreeable to nature should not be 
left out of his distinctions was most necessary ; and 
no less, that what could not be left out should be 
reckoned upon as of some account ; and again, as 
necessary, if we affirm such and such things to be 
of some account, that our species of prazposita or 
preferables be allowed. So that this distinction is 
a very just one, and the advancers of it, because 
they would have it sufficiently intelligible, illustrate 
it by a simile. Suppose a die to be thrown, upon 
a wager that such a number shall rise, if such a 
number does indeed come up, that position of it, 
considered abstractedly, approaches very near to 
the end for which it was thrown, as another position 
would utterly defeat that end; and yet that particular 
position does not partake of the nature of the end. 
Thus the preferables I am speaking of have a re- 
lation and affinity to the end itself, though neither 
contained in it, nor influencing in conjunction with 
it. Next comes on the division of good things 



168 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

into TsXixa, those that are of the very essence of 
the final good (to make use, for once, of the bene- 
fit of that concession, that we should have recourse 
to a periphrasis, when the import of the word in 
the original may be thereby better explained) and 
zs-Qiyrixa, those that are instrumental towards our 
attaining of it, and lastly, those that are mixed. 
Virtuous actions are solely those that are purely 
of the essence of it. Friends are alone the purely 
instrumental. And wisdom is both of the essence 
and instrumental; of the essence, because nature 
is concurred with in every act of it ; onA instru- 
mental, because it directs us to and puts us upon 
the practice of virtue. The preferables are also 
either essential ones, instrumental, or mixed: es- 
sential, as our features, our postures, our motions, 
which are some of them agreeable, some disagree- 
able ; instrumental, as money; mixed, as sound 
sensories, or a good state of health. The opinion 
of Chrysippus and Diogenes as to the value of re- 
putation (for the present occasion requires that 
cv3o§ia be construed reputation and not glory) was, 
that, when we have deducted its subserviency, it is 
not worthy to cost us the trouble of extending an 
arm ; and I am all in their interest. Although 
others overpowered by Carneades have since con- 
fessed, that reputation is a thing to be valued and 
sought for itself, and that although it could no way 
turn to advantage^ every man of an ingenuous dis- 
position and improved intellectuals would be glad 



BOOK THE THIRD. I69 

to sit fair in the thoughts of his parents, his kin- 
dred, and all good people ; that though it will 
stand us in very little stead, we should endeavour 
to leave behind us a lasting and an honourable 
mention of our name, in like manner as we make 
provision for our children, though born after our 
decease, barely for their convenience. Now that 
being proved to be our only good which is matter 
of virtue, it follows that we ought to do whatever 
is our duty, though the nature of duty falls not 
within the account of those things which are pro- 
perly good or evil ; for between these lies the ba- 
lance of its reasonableness, and the measures we are 
to take from the reasons which preponderate. 
It is certain we are to be determined to the doing 
of our duty by such reasons as we can shew to be 
the more satisfactory. Whence it appears that 
duty is none of those things which are either good 
or evil in themselves, but hovers in the middle ; 
and since those things which are neither virtues 
nor vices absolutely, are nevertheless of conse- 
quence and advantage, we are not to make the least 
abatement of them. Now some of our actions 
we are determined to by the reasons that result from 
the posture and aspect of those things ; as whatever 
is transacted upon reasons is that which we term 
duty. And therefore duty has no part in the list 
of those things which are either good or evil 
properly so called. And yet is it unquestionable 
that these things are matter for a wise man to work 



170 CICERO Of MORAL END*. 

upon, who, when he puts a duty in practice, first 
satisfies himself that it is a duty, and stands infal- 
libly assured at the same time that that duty moves 
in a middle sphere. For a further proof, observe 
that whatever action bears the name of a complete 
good one is a duty performed, as there is also duty 
unconsummate. So to deliver up honestly what was 
deposited in my hands is a complete good action ; 
to deliver up what is none of my own is a duty. 
The word honestly imports a good act complete ; 
and to give every man his own, is a particular duty 
defined. And because the middle order of things 
comprehends the matter of our choice, whatever 
we do or say with respect thereunto, will be a 
point of duty. And so the unwise as well as the 
wise man, upon the score of that natural affection 
which either bears to himself, will pursue those 
measures which he thinks most agreeable to nature, 
and avoid the contrary. Thus duty lies in common 
between the wise and the unwise^ and discovers 
the middle order of things to be the region of its 
residence. And as all duties whatsoever arise 
out of this element, so all our considerations and 
counsels tend to it, even those about going out of 
or staying in the world ; as to which, when the 
majority is on the side of those things which sym- 
pathise with nature, it is a man's duty to live on ; 
but when the majority either is, or is likely to hang 
on the other side, it is his duty to make his exit. 
Whence it sometimes comes to pass that a wise 



BOOK THE THIRD, 171 

man, though his condition be very happy, is obliged 
to remove out of life ; and a fool, as bad as his 
circumstances are, to keep to his old quarters. For 
the first and best generals in the distribution of 
nature, the secondary or middle, and the last or 
worst are all offered and exposed to the judgment 
and choice of a zvise man, as his materials; and 
the real and chief good and evil, which we have 
made such frequent mention of, reside beyond 
these ; but these are to determine his resolutions, 
one way or the other, as to the advisableness of 
quitting or not quitting life. It is not my being virtu- 
ous or not virtuous that should induce me to run 
upon destruction. But it is a duty incumbent upon 
a wise man, when the face of affairs requires it, 
notwithstanding he is actually in possession of the 
most exalted happiness, to dispatch himself, as 
soon as he can ; as he means to conform precisely 
and scrupulously to the measures of nature, it 
being taken for granted by the stoics, that the cir- 
cumstance of seasonableness or opportunity is the 
distinguishing note and measure of a happy life. 
Accordingly, wisdom lays her commands upon her 
votary to abdicate herself too, when he cannot play 
a better game. On the other hand, seeing our 
moral defects are in themselves no sufficient grounds 
for us to become our own executioners, it follows 
as certainly that a fool, though as such he is fated 
to be miserable, is bound-over to live on till he 
loses a majority of those advantages which are 



173 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

according to nature. And another good reason 
why the man, that is instated in such a majority^ 
should be tied to keep his hold of life, is because 
he is never the more unhappy if he keeps it than 
if he leaves it, its continuance not at all aggravating 
any disobliging conditions of it which may tempt 
him to throw it up. Moreover, the stoics adver- 
tise, that it nearly concerns us to observe how 
effectually it is contrived and adjusted in the nature 
of things, that those creatures which propagate 
should love what they beget ; and from this natural 
principle we fetch and account for the fundamen- 
tals of society and commerce among men. The 
very figure and fabric of our bodies demonstrate 
procreation to be among those ends to which they 
were formed ; and that procreation was intended 
upon the forming of our bodies, and not withal a 
love and tuition of what should spring from us, 
were most unaccountable. The brutes have a 
propensity to these offices implanted in them, and 
by the care and trouble which they undergo, as 
well in the part of nursing as of bringing forth, 
providence has expressly promulged and counte- 
nanced the principle ; insomuch that we have not 
a fuller assurance of our natural aversion to pain, 
than of the importunity and impulses which we 
feel within us, enforcing the parent's affection 
toward the child. And this establishment in nature 
lies at the bottom of civil and personal intercourses 
and correspondences, and obliges every man to a 



BOOK THE THIRD. 173 

concern and regard for his neighbour, because his 
neighbour is a man as well as himself. It is true, 
some of the parts of the body serve only for their 
own purposes, as the eyes and ears ; but then 
others are ministerial to their fellow-members, as 
the legs and hands. Thus again, there are beasts 
of prey, the ends of whose being seem to terminate 
in themselves. But then there is the pinna or 
nacre-fish (that in the open shell) and the pinnoteres, 
as it is called, because though it makes a custom 
of swimming out, yet it never deserts its tenement, 
but immediately closes it upon its return, as who 
should say, caution is an excellent thing (beside 
the pismires, the bees, and the storks) which pur- 
sue a public and common interest in the affairs 
they carry on. And these combinations and part- 
nerships are much more effectual and perfect in 
the societies of mankind. You see then how na- 
tural it is for us to form ourselves into communi- 
ties and corporations. The stoics further teach 
you, that the providence of the gods governs the 
universe, and that as well trie college of the hea- 
venly powers as the whole multitude of mankind, 
and every individual in it are of the substance of 
that universe. And thence infer, that the more 
public good is to supersede the more private. For 
that whoever pretends to any probity, wisdom, a 
dutiful and governable temper, or a tolerable no- 
tion of civil duties, will, in imitation of the laws, 
more studiously solicit the interest of the public, 



174 CICEHO OF MORAL ENDS. 

than any private one whatsoever, though it were 
his own ; and that he who is a traitor to his coun- 
try, is neither better nor worse than a mercenary, 
corrupted renegado from the common cause of 
mankind : consequently that whosoever makes a 
present of his life to his country, merits very par- 
ticular commendations, for corroborating in so signal 
a manner this doctrine, that we ought to be more 
zealous for our country's preservation than for our 
own; and this in reference to some barbarous and 
hardy wretches, who declare they will readily give 
their vote for a bonfire to be made of the whole 
world the day after they are stepped out of it ; 
(there is a thread-bare Greek verse to this purpose 
in which I might have expressed myself.) Now with 
respect to these, the stpics urge that it is our duty 
to take care for the well-being of our survivors and 
posterity, properly and absolutely for their sakes. 
And these cordial, affectionate intentions are pre- 
supposed upon the dictating of a last will, or a 
dying man's recommending their respective charges 
to his friends. Furthermore ; that it is natural 
for us to unite in confederations and alliances, is 
as apparent as the irreconcilableness of any man's 
genius to perpetual solitude, though he were pro- 
mised it should be qualified with all imaginable 
amusements of recreation and pleasure. Besides, 
there is implanted in our constitution a good- 
natured eagerness to be as serviceable, and to as 
many of our kind, as we can, particularly by recti- 



BOOK THE THIRD. 175 

tying their judgments, and furnishing their facul- 
ties. We are naturally as forward to communicate 
as to accept of notions, and he must be very sin- 
gular indeed, that imparts to nobody the least 
portion of his own observations and acquisitions. 
Again; it is a rule of nature to those people who 
enjoy singular privileges of fortune, and may com- 
mand in the world, that, after the examples of 
Hercules and Bacchus, they should exert themselves 
as the champions and protectors of mankind. So 
instinct animates the bulls to encounter the lions 
with collected force and fury in defence of the 
heifers and the calves. When we consecrate to 
Jove himself his epithets of greatest and best ; 
when we appeal to him under his titles of beneficial 
and benign, the preserver of our families and 
government, (stator) we signify how glorious a 
province it is which we ascribe to him, namely^ 
that of guarding us against violence, and delivering 
us out ef danger. And therefore, if below we are 
unsolicitous for, and wanting to the advance of our 
own mutual interests, it .were unreasonable and 
presumptuous to make it our petition to the gods, 
that they would be pleased to receive us into their 
favour and patronage. In brief; we slide as 
directly into civil society and commerce, as we 
come to the use and exercise of our limbs, before 
we can give a philosophical account of them. 
And unless we did so, justice and generosity must 
be very precarious and chimerical things. They 



176 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

add, that although the laws and bonds of society 
hold men and men together, yet between men and 
brutes no such intercourses take place ; agreeable 
to that excellent remark of Chrysippus, that man 
is born to incorporation and society, and that every 
thing else received its existence for the use and ser- 
vice of the gods and him ; and consequently, that 
man may dispose of the inferior animals as he 
pleases, to his own advantage, without doing them 
any injury ; that because the establishment of civil 
rights is thus natural and necessary, the just man is 
he that is careful to have them preserved ; the un- 
just he that invades and infringes them. And yet 
that there is nothing in any common or civil rights, 
which interferes with the rights of individuals; as 
the seats in the play-house are all for common use, 
and yet every man's place is his own when he has 
taken it : that since it appears to have been the in- 
tent of the efficient cause that men should succour 
and support one another, a wise man is not at all 
forbidden by his character to take upon him and ad- 
minister a public post, nor to marry and have chil- 
dren ; for that wisdom and love, if it be chaste and 
pure, are compatible with one another. As for 
the measures and course of life peculiar to the cy- 
nics, the stoics are divided, some admitting that 
when, as it may happen, the exigencies of a man's 
condition call for it, he should have recourse to 
those measures ; but others will not hear of such 
a dispensation. And the better to strengthen this 



BOOK THE THIRD. 177 

eeconomy of commerce and natural affection, what 
thev call (o^sXrj^ra and ^Xa/jijutara, substantial 
emoluments, and substantial detriments, they hold 
to be of common concernment ; the former to the 
advantage, the latter to the disadvantage of the 
community. ,And as they affirm them to be of 
common concerrvment, so to lie in a parity, which 
they will not allow us to what they call ev%f>ri£rj~ 
\kOLTOL and Sua^oT^'aara (conveniences and i?iconve- 
tiicnces) though they must make these two to be of 
common concernment : because that which brings 
a real advantage must be simply and properly good, 
and that which brings a real disadvantage must be 
simply and properly evil, and to the instances of 
either of these kinds disparity is foreign. Now 
conveniences and inconveniences are to be reduced to 
the species before mentioned of prefer ables and 
their opposites ; and to those disparity is essential. 
Any particular justifiable or unjustifiable actions, 
in respect of the agents, are not of common con* 
cernment, as the substantial emoluments are de- 
clared to be. Of this last advantageous kind is 
friendship ; and hence the stoics recommend the 
cultivation of it. There are some among them who 
maintain, that it is the part of a wise man to love 
his friend and himself alike, and others that say, 
he ought to love himself best, reserving it still as a 
caution in behalf of the obligations to justice which 
are fastened upon our nature, that there must be 
no snipping my own gains out of another mans 

2 A 



178 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

cloth. But not one of them will endure any such 
supposition as that considerations of profit should 
ingratiate or enforce the duties of friendship or 
equity, because the same considerations will serve 
as effectually to undermine and supplant them, it 
being unconceivable how there should be any such 
thing as justice or friendship in the world, unless 
both subsist upon their own intrinsic merit and 
dignity. They teach us likewise, that the notion 
of right is truly and properly that, the definition 
whereof we find legible in the nature of things; 
that a wise man will abhor all thoughts not only 
of injurious practices, but of practices any way 
prejudicial to another ; as also of associating with 
his friends, or his benefactors and patrons, in any 
villanous devices or the execution of them. They 
contend for it with all the nerves of truth and ar- 
gument that equity and profit are inseparable ; 
that whatever is just and fair is truly honourable 
and becoming ; and (convertibly) that whatever is 
truly honourable and becoming must be just and 
fair. In the next place, to the aforesaid variety of 
moral virtues they annex their corollaries of logic 
and natural philosophy; the former of which they 
denominate a virtue, because by it we are enabled 
to make our party £;ood against all the little skir- 
mishes of falsehood and fallacy, and to confirm and 
ascertain the doctrines which we lay down in rela- 
tion to moral good and evil. For the stoics appre- 
hend, that if a man is not something of a logician, 



BOOK THE THIRD. 17$ 

he must needs be very liable to be misled and 
imposed upon. So that unless inconsideration 
and ignorance in general are no faults, when they 
reckon upon that which remedies both as a virtue, 
they have reason. And when they ascribe as 
much to natural philosophy, they justify themselves 
as well; for, say they, when a man proposes to 
come up as near to the model of nature as he can, 
if he goes to work regularly, he sets out with the 
contemplation of the productions and methods of 
providence. Not to mention at what uncertainties 
we must be left about the nature of moral good and 
evil, until such time as we have competently satis- 
fied ourselves about the phenomena of the world, 
how far the gods are concerned with it, in what 
decrees of symmetry man, the little universe, 
answers to the great one, and how much he is 
indebted to the sages of old for those excellent 
precepts of theirs ; that tee should never bear 
against the bias of an exigency ; that zee should 
resign ourselves to the conduct of the Deity ; that 
every man should knoiv his own person, thoroughly, 
and no man exceed bounds. Now the just impor- 
tance of all these, and it is very considerable, he 
that is a stranger to natural philosophy cannot reach. 
Then too this science will carry us a great way in 
stating the motives and encouragements, discerni- 
ble in the face of nature, to a strict observation of 
justice, and of all the duties of friendship and huma- 
nity. Nay, until we have made a due progress in 



180 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS, 

our physical inquiries, we can hardly have a com- 
plete rationale of our duties and obligations to the 
divine powers themselves. But, I fear, by this 
time, I have out-run my line, and expatiated 
beyond the proper limits of the question proposed. 
However the charming contexture of all the parts 
of the stoical discipline, and the surprising depend- 
ance of its institutions, one upon another, will 
bear me out. heavens ! are you not ravished 
at the review of them ? What does nature herself, 
as unimitably elegant and exquisite as are her per- 
fections and beauties ; what does art and invention 
afford so delicately proportioned, and so firmly 
compacted ? How curious the agreement between 
our antecedents and consequents 1 Does not every 
one of the latter grow out of the former ? And are 
not all the parts of the hypothesis tied together 
with such a continuity, that if you crop off a sylla- 
ble, you ruin the whole? and yet we challenge you 
to wound the least fibre. O 1 what an awful ! what 
an heroical ! what a steady example is our man of 
wisdom! He stands convinced and assured, that 
virtue is alone the good of man, and so cannot but 
be always happy, and in an actual possession of those 
privileges and eminences, which, when attributed 
to him, are a subject for the pedantic world to rally 
and joke upon. For why is Tarquin so much a 
monarch as he ; Tarquin, who knew not how to 
govern either his subjects or himself? Why is not 
he more truly the people's master, I mean &dictator t 



BOOK THE THIRD. 181 

than Scylla, whose province, when all is said, lay 
only between his three accursed qualities, luxury, 
avarice, and barbarity? Why not richer than 
Crassus too, seeing Crassus, if it had not been for 
his wants, would never have passed ihefral, and 
engaged in a groundless war ? Alas ! All things 
we may fairly say, are in his possession, and in his 
alone, who knows what use to make of every thing. 
A wise man is the most charming of all beauties, 
because regularity of features is much more capti- 
vating in the soul than in the body. A wise man 
only is in a state of freedom, as never lying at any 
one's mercy, or submitting to the motions of his 
own appetites, A wise man only is invulnerable 
and unconquered, because his mind cannot be made 
a prisoner, though his body should be covered with 
chains. Lastly, a wise man cuts off all occasion 
for suspending your judgment about the condition 
of his happiness until you have seen the conclusion 
of his life, and so proves that one of the seven 
wise men gave Croesus very foolish advice. For 
if Croesus had ever been a happy man, it was im- 
possible that his happiness should leave him even 
at the funeral pile, which Cyrus had provided him. 
Well then ! If of necessity all good men must be 
happy, and only they: what can deserve to be 
more cultivated by us than philosophy, or to be 
more sacred with us and dear to us than virtue ? 



CICERO 



OF 



MORAL ENDS. 



BOOK IV. 



Thus he concluded his discourse; and when he 
had done so, suffer me Cato, said I, to admire 
your strength of memory, and clearness of expres- 
sion after the proofs you have been giving of both : 
and withal, either to despair of ever answering you, 
or at least till I have had some time to recollect 
myself. The stoical hypothesis, though perhaps 
not very solid, (for I will not be bold in my cen- 
sures too soon) is so closely laid together, and so 
artificially worked up, that it is no easy matter to 
look through the structure of it. Are you there- 
abouts ? replied he : What ? have not I heard you 
since the new statute was in force, pleading for 
three hours together against a prosecutor's allega- 
tions upon the same clay whereon they were exhi- 
bited? And do you think you shall have leave to 
adjourn this cause ? No : though on your side it is 
as indefensible as a great many others, which ne- 



1A4t CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

vertheless you have carried. The controversy is 
no strange or new one either to yourself or others ; 
it has been often already in your hands ; make up 
to it once more, and you will find both matter and 
words as ready to advance. I am never in haste, 
said I, when I have the stoics to deal with, not so 
much for any opinion I have of their principles, as 
because I cannot rightly understand them, and 
when I am forced to tell them so, it put me out of 
countenance. I grant, said Cato, we talk some- 
times a little out of the way, but we know not how 
to help it, because our subject-matter is dark and 
perplexing. That is remarkable indeed, said I, 
and yet when the peripatetics hold" forth upon the 
same subject, and to the same effect, I understand 
every word. Upon the same subject to the same 
effect ? said he : then have I been proving all this 
while to no purpose, that the stoics and peripatetics 
come not near one another, not only as to terms, 
but by the whole distance and length of either in- 
stitution ? Make that sufficiently clear, said I, and 
I will capitulate immediately. I verily believed I 
had done so, said he ; but if you think not, be 
pleased to fall upon that particular before you have 
engaged yourself in any other. With all my 
heart, said I, and if I may reasonably oblige you 
to it, speak up as well as you can for yourself in 
your turn. Be it so, said he, though the fairest 
and the best way would have been, to give every 
man his due, whether stoic or peripatetic, without 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 1 8S 

making any comparisons, I am well satisfied, Cato, 
said I, that the principles which had been current 
with Speusippus, Aristotle, and Xenocrates, all 
disciples of Plato ; and with their two pupils after- 
wards Polemo'andTheophrastus; are so extensive 
in their compass, and so handsomely laid together, 
that Zeno could hare no pretence for separating 
from Polemo who had been his instructor, and 
from the other leaders of that institution. Here 
I must desire you not to expect a reply from me to 
every particular you have offered ; rather, if you 
please, let the main body of our forces be drawn 
out on either side. And be you careful to let me 
know what it is which you think may be reformed 
or improved. Now the philosophers aforesaid ob- 
serving that men are born with a common aptitude 
and tendency to the exercise of the more noted 
and conspicuous virtues, justice, temperance, and 
the like, which in their nature are analogous to 
other arts and sciences, though in the matter and 
exercise of them superior ; and that we make after 
these virtues with all the ardour and ambition ima- 
ginable : that our souls are, as it were, inlaid with a 
love of knowledge ; moreover that one great end of 
our coming into the world is to fall into societies 
and confederations, and that the greater a man's 
genius is, he strives to make himself a more con- 
siderable instance hereof : observing these things 
to be so ; they distributed the whole of philosophy 
into three parts, the division which Zeno has 
2 B 



186 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

adopted for his own. The first limb of the divi- 
sion is moral philosophy, and our question about 
the end of moral good lying deep in the substance 
of it, I shall forbear to consider it yet a while, and 
at present only remark, that the old peripatetics 
and academics, that held the same opinions under 
different names, have handled at large, and very ju- 
diciously, the subject of politics or civil govern- 
ment. What a mighty number of treatises have we 
extant of theirs relating to public establishment ? 
And then how many instances may we thank them 
for of true oratory, in their exercises, as well as 
rules of art, in their systems. Every nice, meta-r 
physical definition or distinction they have been 
able to set out in very modish and agreeable lan- 
guage ! So, I grant, have some of your brethren 
sometimes ; but then it was, in the main, Cimme- 
rian darkness, whereas every sentence of theirs is 
clear and pellucid. Then as often as they are con- 
cerned with those arguments which challenge at 
once both elegance of style and weight of reasoning; 
can any thing be more lofty and splendid than their 
discourses ? As particularly when they write upon 
the subjects of justice, fortitude, friendship, con- 
duct, philosophy, public administration, tempe- 
rance, the bravery of some men | * # * * # j^ ey are 
not for harrowing and scarifying like the stoics, but 

+ What is here lost, I will not pretend to retrieve, even with 

the assistance of Lambin, whose guesses Gruter very justly 
rejects. J J * 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 187 

when the matter they are to work upon is of grand 
importance, they garnish it with a proportionable 
grace of expression; and when it is more slight and 
humble, they never let it lose any thing by the 
comments they make upon it. How happy are 
they in their consolatory and monitory essays ad- 
dressed to persons of the highest rank and repute? 
They had two roads or channels of disputation to 
answer to the double face of circumstances in the 
nature of the things considered by them ; for ei- 
ther the dispute must proceed in general terms 
without being reduced to any certain persons or 
spaces of time ; or if these are considered, then 
upon some particulars either of fact, or right, 
or parties, complications of terms. Accordingly, 
they traced things both ways, and had they not 
done so, could never have sallied out with such a 
fluency upon every subject of either kind. Now 
Zeno and his partizans have troubled their heads 
with nothing of this; whether because they would 
not, or could not look so far, I cannot tell, 
Cleanthes,itis true, and Chrysippus have published 
their methods of rhetoric : and what is the best we 
can say of them? Why truly that there are no 
grammars like them in the world, to teach a man 
silence. In short, I know no other use of them 
but to trepan us into a new language, and wean us 
from our old one. And is this his way to warm the 
spirits of his audience and to set them on fire ? 
You see what a mighty business he drives at ! It 



188 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

is to persuade an honest bourgher that civita vec« 
chia and the universe are the same corporation, and 
that he that is free of the first has the same relation 
and privilege in the other. Is such discourse as 
this like to put the blood into a ferment of satisfac- 
tion ? No, it would much sooner check the pas- 
sions in their career, than set them a going ! I 
confess, it was quick and smart, your dwarfish 
proof of your wise man's being a king, a dictator, 
and a Crassus ; thanks to the rhetoricians that fur- 
nished you ! It were all for the stoics if they could 
speak a little more up to the merits of virtue : nay, 
though they extend its jurisdiction to the full com_ 
plement of human happiness. .For what are all 
their little interrogations but so many flea bites. 
We may be glad to admit of them, but can never be 
convinced by them, and they leave us the same as 
they found us. They are undoubtedly of especial 
concernment, and perhaps there is truth underneath 
them too, but then, as I take it, they are treated 
below their quality. Next come on logic and physics. 
Remember, it was my bargain that the summum 
honum should bring up the rear of the whole dis- 
pute. Now Zeno could never find in his heart to 
set about a reformation of one or the other of these, 
having not the least fault to find with the model of 
either. In relation to the first; is there any omis- 
sion or oversight, I beseech you, with which the 
ancients may be charged? Have they not be- 
queathed us as many definitions, and as good rules 



BOOK THE FOURTH. lt>9 

of defining as can be desired ? Have they not, as 
the reason of the thing prescribed, settled their 
divisions as well as their definitions, and likewise 
the whole process of dividing ? Not to speak of 
their rules concerning contraries, upon which 
their doctrines of kinds and species are erected. 
For the ground of their argumentations they laid 
down self-evident propositions, observing a due 
method of connexion, and weighing the truth of 
every proposition till they arrive at the conclusion. 
Where do you meet with such a mart of ratioci- 
nations as among them? Not like your little falla- 
cious queries. Then too it must be remembered 
how frequently they pregs us as well to confirm 
the credit of our senses by our reason as of our 
reason by our senses, and that so, as not to 
confound the one with the other ? Where not 
these the men that first launched all the rules and 
directions which the logicians keep such a clutter 
with at this day? Chrysippus, I grant, was a con- 
siderable pains-taker in that part, but Zeno made 
nothing of it, in comparison of the ancients. And 
if as to some things he succeeded as well as they, 
yet for others he never so much as took knowledge 
of them. Toward the perfecting of an argument, 
whether in the mind or in words, there concur the 
two arts of invention and reasoning. The latter of 
these has been improved both by stoics and peri- 
patetics ; the former to advantage by the peripate- 
tics, for the stoics never meddled with it at all. 



]gO CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

No, they little imagined, where any mines of argu- 
ment lay, which the peripatetics discovered metho- 
dically and skilfully. And by this meaus they 
have eased us of the incumberance of repetitions, 
amplifications, and glosses; matters remote and 
involyed being easily managed and come at, when 
once we know whereabouts they lie, and which is 
the way that will bring us to them. You will tell 
me, that there have been great wits, who by the 
strength of pure natural parts have advanced thus 
far : but all this while it is the safer way to steer 
by art than nature alone. To sprinkle expressions 
poetically is one thing ; judiciously and logically 
to distribute and distinguish them is another. And 
thus the case runs too between the peripatetics and 
the stoics, with regard to your natural philosophy, 
the ends whereof, beside those two of Epicurus, 
to rid us of the terrors of death, and the plague of 
superstition, are made to be the teaching ourselves 
temperance and modesty from those circumscrip- 
tions and that decorum which the gods themselves 
have observed ; magnanimity by contemplating 
their operations and achievements; and justice 
by a sufficient inquiry into the attributes, intentions, 
and determinations of the great sovereign of the 
universe* For it is a conformity of ideas and 
purposes within us to ideas and purposes in him, 
which philosophers mean when they talk of a 
genuine and imperial law of nature. Moreover 
these physical speculations are accompanied with 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 191 

an endless delight arising from our progress in 
knowledge, the only pleasure upon which, after 
we have dispatched our affairs of urgent conse- 
quence, we may bestow our vacant hours with 
credit. In a word, the stoics have copied from 
the peripatetics as in all other principal parts of 
philosophy, so particularly in their two assertions 
of the existence of the gods, and the four elements 
of the material world. Not but Zeno upon that 
untoward question which had come abroad, whe- 
ther there is any such thing as a fifth sort of sub- 
stance, constituting the reasonable and intellectual 
part of the universe, (and here came in the inquiry 
they made about the nature of the soul,) affirmed, 
that it consists of fire; in this, and in some few 
instances beside, he will not agree with them. 
Notwithstanding as to the main point of all. that a 
divine spirit or nature has the management of the 
universe, and turns all the greater wheels of it, he 
determines just as they have done. And then 
instead of that narrow compass both of matter and 
things, which the stoics suppose, the peripatetics 
make the whole very ample and extensive ; not to 
say what mighty advances and collections they 
have made, in stating the several kinds of animals, 
and illustrating their originals, the structure of 
their bodies, and the length of their lives. How 
fully have they acquitted themselves in relation to 
the vegetative world? How well have they ex- 
plained and laid open the several causes of things, 



192 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

both final and efficient ? And here we have the 
conduit which supplies us with an inexhaustible 
plenty of sound argument to clear up our physical 
account of things. Upon the whole then, I am to 
seek for a reason why the name of the sect should 
be changed. For it is no matter, whether Zeno 
trod upon the heels of the peripatetics in every 
circumstance and particular, or not, so long 
as, it is certain, they led him the way. Just as 
Epicurus in his natural philosophy is no more 
than the second edition of Democritus, though 
he has made alterations, and perhaps not a few ; 
but still the greater and the more material part 
of the hypothesis is old : and as ungraciously 
have you stoics dealt by the men that gave you 
what you enjoy. So much for that head. Next 
as to the matter of summum bonum, the very root 
and trunk of all philosophy, let us a little examine, 
whether Zeno's refinings will justify his separation 
from those philosophical instructors of his, that 
first brought that same summum bonum to light. 
Upon this occasion, Cato, I shall make bold in 
my turn, to set out the sense of the final good, as 
it comprises all the business of philosophy ; and 
what is by the stoics looked upon to be such : not 
to disparage that idea of it which you have been at 
the pains to give me, but only to discover as far as 
we are able, how much Zeno has added to it. His 
predecessors the peripatetics, and in that number 
Polemo most expressly, would have secundum na~ 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 193 

turtim vwere, a life after nature's model, to be the 
summum bonum ; and to this the stoics affix a three- 
fold exposition, as first, that it is a life, the mea- 
sures whereof result from a judgment rightly passed 
upon the measures of nature ; and this, they say, 
was Zeno's sense of his final good, where he pro- 
nounces it to be that which vou were mentioning, 
convenienter natural vivere, to conform to the mea- 
sures of nature; secondly, through the whole 
course of our lives to discharge all, or however the 
best part of the media officia (middle duties.) But 
then this exposition clashes with the former ; for 
the rectum or xarog^a>jma you were speaking of 
(that which is altogether just and good) is appro- 
priate to the man of wisdom, whereas the discharg- 
ing of unfinished or imperfect duties is no more 
than many an unwise man is capable of. Thirdly, 
so to live as to make the best, if not of all, yet of 
the largest portion of those circumstances which 
are agreeable to nature. Now this is plainly tres- 
passing beyond matters of practice ; the summum 
bonum thus explained comprehending, beside a 
virtuous life, all such things as are agreeable to 
nature, and not at our command. And to this 
third summum bonum, as also that character of life 
which it requires as including virtue, it is for none 
but a wise man to make any pretensions. What 
is this at last, by the confession of the stoics them- 
selves, but the very same summum bonum for 
which Xenocrates and Aristotle had declared ? 

2 c 



194 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

Accordingly they have recognized that same first 
principle of nature which you begun with, in words 
to this effect : every being in nature affects its own 
conservation, and endeavours to retain itself in the 
properties of its kind. And hence it is, they tell 
us, that we apply ourselves to learn arts and sciences, 
because of their usefulness and subserviency to our 
nature, and consequently the main one of them all 
must be the art of living, that is, in such a man- 
ner as to lose nothing of what nature has bestowed 
upon us, and to fill up the defects remaining. Fur- 
ther ; they divided the whole compositum of man in- 
to soul and body, determined both to be things va- 
luable in themselves, and that therefore the virtues, 
and excellencies of both are valuable too, making 
the virtues of the mind as incomparably superior 
to all advantages of the body, as the mind itself to 
the body. Wisdom they recommended for the 
guardian and governant, the companion and help- 
mate of human nature, and alleged that it was its 
business to protect our composition, and hold body 
and mind together in a commodious union. Then 
after they have offered you the gross of their notion, 
they come to manage more artfully. The estimate 
and use we are to make of the goods of the body 
they conceived were obvious enough. But took 
a nearer and ajnicer view of the goods of the mind, 
among the principal whereof justice, and as it were 
in embryo, first presented itself. These, of all the 
philosophers, were the first that urged the obliga- 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 1^5 

lions of nature incumbent upon that which pro- 
creates to love its own issue, and the natural validity 
of conjugal ties and matrimonial union antecedent 
thereunto ; and that the friendships and intimacies 
of relations all resulted from this origin. When 
they had thus prepared the way, in the next place 
they set themselves to contemplate the several spe- 
cies of virtue, their derivations and progressions ; 
and ascended by these steps to that greatness of 
mind which makes a man a match for fortune, let 
her do her worst, upon this consideration, that a 
man of true wisdom has the world in a string. 
Indeed, whosoever followed the directions of the 
old philosophy, disappointed the treachery and 
malice of fortune, with all the ease imaginable. 
Thus they set out with the first fixed principles in 
nature, and then superinduced the amplitudines bo- 
norum, or consummative goods, whether they be such 
as are consequent of a closer inspection into matters 
more difficult and dark, pursuant to that desire of 
knowlege and information which is radicated in the 
mind, and spurs it on to exercises of ratiocination, 
and the improvement of the apprehensive and dis- 
cursive faculties ; or whether they be such as com- 
port with human nature, in regard that man is the 
only animal that is born with a principle of modes- 
ty and sense of shame ; that courts alliances and 
society with those of his own kind, and finds himself 
tied up to a strict observation of honesty and de- 
cency in all his actions and words. And thus the 
seminary of natural principles above mentioned gives 



196 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

birth to all the duties of temperance, modesty, jus- 
tice, and every other virtue. 1 have now, Cato, 
summed up the scheme of that philosophy for which 
I am concerned, and having done so, would wil- 
lingly understand upon what account Zeno and this 
primitive set of notions, could not agree together. 
Is there any of them which he> has ever disap- 
proved ? Does he dispute whether self-preserva- 
tion be a natural principle ? Whether every living 
creature is so much in favour with itself as to pro- 
mote, as far as it can, the continuance of its exis- 
tence in its proper kind ? Whether, seeing the end 
* of every art is resolved into that which nature prin- 
cipally pursues by it, the art of living has the 
same end as the rest ? Whether the mind and 
body we are compounded of, with their excellencies 
and privileges, are worth our choice and good look- 
ing-to for their own sakes? Whether the excellen- 
cies of the mind deservedly take the upper hand ? 
Whether the peripatetics are in the right as to 
what they assert concerning prudence, love of 
knowledge, human commerce and society, temper- 
ance, modesty, magnanimity, and all other kinds 
of virtue? No, the stoics frankly acknowledge, that 
the peripatetics have succeeded admirably weU 
upon all these heads, but that Zeno stands excused, 
upon other grounds, for erecting a separate interest* 
Undoubtedly ! Zeno was for setting all things in a 
true light ! and the errors of the ancients were 
intolerable ! O the hideous perverseness and 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 197 

stupidity of the men, to call a flourishing constitu- 
tion, an ignorance of pain, a clear, good eye-sight, 
and all the other senses in perfection ; to call these 
things good, as if any distinction were to be made 
between them and their contraries ! One would 
think they might have easily perceived that these 
good things of theirs are no more than praposita, 
preferables ! Again; how wise were the old gen- 
tlemen, I warrant you, when, instead of advan- 
tages of the body to be such as we should rather 
choose to have than be without, they have repre- 
sented them as desirable for themselves ! So for 
life, there ought to be nothing in it but virtue ! 
What an escape! to say, that a condition of life, 
garnished with all other accommodations agreeable 
to nature, is the more desirable rather than the 
more eligible! Virtue, it seems, is self-sufficient, 
to render us as happy as it is possible for us to be ; 
and when a wise man is at the tip-top of all felicity, 
can he wish things were better with him? Yes 
truly, he will endeavour to keep out of the way of 
pains, diseases, and infirmity ! Now was it not 
shrewdly done of Zeno, to innovate upon such 
pretences and provocations! Neither must we 
overlook some other hints which you touched upon, 
as became a man of art and discretion, that alt 
vicious habits and actions, whether of imprudence, 
injustice, or any other, are of an equal obliquity ; 
and that though a man climb to as high a pitch of 
virtue, as the nerves of his natural faculties and 



198 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

learning will carry him, yet his case is as much to 
be pitied as that of the wickedest wretch upon 
earth, untill he arrives at a sinless perfection. For 
example, Plato was an extraordinary man, but be- 
cause he was not the stoic" s wise one, he was as ill 
a liver, and as unfortunate a poor soul, as if he had 
been the most desperate villain in flesh. What 
must the old philosophy do if it were not for these 
corrections and amendments ! But still there is no 
admission for them into cities, market-places, or 
courts of justice ; for if any body should talk at this 
rate in public, who could have the patience to hear 
him set up for a professor in wisdom and morality? 
To persuade us there is nobody can teach the 
conduct of life like himself, and yet has the very 
same conceptions with other people, the very same 
principles, only he changes the significations of 
words, cashiers the old names of things, and fills 
up their places with new ones of his own ! What 
would you say if a prisoner's counsel, in the 
conclusion of his plea, should flatly deny the 
inconveniences of banishment or confiscation, for 
that they are not fugienda, what we should be 
glad to escape, but rejicienda, what we have no rea- 
son to make our choice, and signify to the judge, 
that clemency will be thrown away upon his client? 
Or if Hannibal were advanced to the city gates, 
and had begun a breach, and a stoic should start 
up, and prove with might and main, that there is 
no harm at all in captivity, slavery, destruction, and 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 1Q9 

devastation ? If the stoic's man of wisdom be solely 
entitled to virtue and happiness, how came it 
to pass that our senate inserted the words, quod 

EJUS VIRTUTE,AUT FELICITATE, to whose virtue 

and success zee owe, in the order they passed for 
Africanus's triumph? In earnest, it is a very 
unaccountable philosophy which expresses itself 
abroad in the vulgar forms, but, when it comes 
from the press, in its own ! and all the while the 
things to which new names are assigned, receive no 
manner of alteration but what is purely modal and 
abstracted. Whether we account of riches, power, 
and health, as things properly good, or only pre- 
ferable; as long as he that affirms them to be good, 
reckons upon them no more than he that will have 
them called preferable, what does it signify ? And 
therefore it was no wonder that Pansetius, a man 
of such remarkable sincerity and seriousness, and 
a fit privy -counsellor for Scipio and Laslilius, being 
to send Quintus Tubero some advice relating to 
patience, has not a word to say against pain's 
being an evil, which, if it had not been one, should 
have been his grand argument: but shews the 
nature and qualities of it, in what degree it is 
foreign, and may be thrown off, and by what me* 
thods we may support ourselves under it. Now 
this man was a stoic, which makes it more proba- 
ble that he designed by such a management to dis- 
countenance that abuse of words, of which I have 
complained. To return, and make a nearer ad- 



200 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

vance to yourself, Cato ; give me leave to press 
hard upon you, and attempt the comparison 
between yours and other assertions, which I prefer 
before yours. And as to all points, wherein you 
and the ancients are both of a mind, let us allow 
them without more ado, and so, if you think good, 
fall directly upon those articles which are contro- 
verted. The proposal, said he, looks well : come 
as close to the business, and thrust as home as you 
please. Hitherto your objections have been vulgar 
and of course ; and therefore I promise myself you 
have higher strain in reserve. Meaning me ? said 
I, yet, so far as I am able, I will answer your ex- 
pectations, and when I am at a stand for want of 
something better, take up with coarser convenien- 
ces. In the first place then be it established as 
a postulate, that we are instigated by nature to 
desire and consult for our own safety and well- 
being. The subject of our next meditations ought 
to be our own nature ; for how should we look to 
the main chance, till we know what it is ? We are men, 
or beings compounded of mind and body, whatever 
principles they consist of. The mind and body 
therefore challenge our good affections upon the 
title of a natural impulse, and from them it is that 
we must measure and make out the condition of 
the ultimate good. And this, if the premisses may 
be depended on, appears to be the acquisition of 
the largest and the choicest portion of circum- 
stances agreeable to nature. This was the moral 



BOOK THE FOURTH, 201 

^cnd of the peripatetics ; only they defined it more 
compendiously, secundum naturam vivere, to fol- 
low nature's rule of life \ this was their summum 
bonum. And let your brethren, or yourself, with 
all your abilities, satisfy us, if it is possible, how 
upon the footing of the precedent propositions, you 
will fetch a summum bonum out of honesty or 
virtue, or the congruity, in your sense, of our lives 
to nature? Or whereabouts, or which way you 
have dropped your bodies together with all those 
other advantages which lie out of human jurisdic- 
tion ; not excepting duty itself? How nature 
should recommend, and wisdom at the same time 
reject all these, I am to learn. But what if instead 
of man's chief good, we were employed to look 
out for that of some imaginary living-creature, (to 
make use of a fiction for the lightning-up of truth) 
with no more than mind or spirit in its substance ? 
Even such a living-creature would have nothing to 
say to your moral end. No, it would ask, where 
are the blessings of health and repose? And as it 
would be intent upon its own preservation, so it 
could not but be hankering after these. What 
other end therefore of its existence or action should 
it regard, but that of living according to nature ? 
or in other words, as I have explained it above, 
that it should be happy in, if not all, yet the most 
and the best of those circumstances which are 
agreeable to nature? It is no matter what sort of 
animal I instance in, for though it should be my 

new fashioned one without flesh and bones, it is the 

2 D 



§02 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

same thing : the mind is not without its tone and 
affections analogous to those of the body. And 
therefore it would finally apprehend its jinal good 
to be as I have described it. Chrysippus, where 
he makes a division of animals, observes that 
in some the body is the sovereign and excelling 
part, in others the mind, and that others again 
have this proportionable to that; and then he 
comes to state the last and final good which is 
proper to every species. Man he had disposed of 
under that species in which the mind is principal : 
and yet he allots him such a final good, as if instead 
of being principally mind, he had thought him no- 
thing else. So that before you have lighted on 
some animal or other that is all over incorporeal, 
and utterly unacquainted with any of those things 
which are secundum naturam, agreeable to na- 
ture, as health, or the like, there is no foundation 
for a summum bonum of pure abstracted virtue. 
And how such an animal should exist without 
contradicting its own nature, is unconceivable. 
You tell us of advantages, which upon the compa- 
rison are found so slight and slender, as to disappear 
and be lost. And we grant you that such there 
are, as Epicurus says of some sorts of pleasure, 
so inconsiderable that in a manner they come to 
nothing. But are all the advantages of the body, 
at least when in due process of time arrived at 
perfection, of no better a class than this? As to 
those advantages which are so mean that they are 
presently eclipsed by others, it is very often indif- 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 203 

ferent to us whether we have them or not, as (to 
use your own similitudes) it were to no purpose to 
light up a candle to the sun, or make over a 
counter to ihe treasury of Croesus, And those 
which are not so easily obscured may sometimes 
too be of little account. As the accession of a 
month to a ten-years life of pleasure has some- 
thing good in it, because it lengthens the pleasure 
of it, and yet if we cannot obtain it, the ten-years 
life of pleasure hath been a life of pleasure still. 
The accession of a month is what I reckon parallel 
to the goods of the body. Now it is worth our 
while to dive after these accessionals : and there- 
fore when the stoics give us to learn that a wise 
map will rather choose that the virtuous life he 
leads shall have, than want, the conveniences of a 
jug and a pitcher, and yet that these utensils con- 
duce nothing to his happiness, they make me smile. 
Shall we dispute, or rather laugh such an illustra- 
tion out of doors ? Could any thing in nature be 
more comical and ridiculous than a man in concern 
about the having or not having of a jug ? It is 
one of the greatest services for which I can be in- 
debted to another, the rescuing my body out of 
indispositions and torments. And I am apt to 
believe, if the wise man were, at the command of 
a tyrant, to be broke upon the wheel, he would 
put on another- guess countenance than if he had 
let his jug drop ; and muster up all his fortitude 
and patience, as well knowing how desperate an 
expedition he is sent upon, and ivhat a dead-doing 



£04 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

enemy he has, of torment, to encounter, and that 
therefore he must make the most of his virtue. To 
return ; it is none of those diminutive advantages 
which perish in comparison, but the total of those 
which goes to the completion of our summum 
bonum, after which it concerns me to inquire. In 
the life of a voluptuary any one pleasure is as none 
among so many, and yet it makes a part of a vo- 
luptuous life, as little as there is of it. A groat 
would have lain undistinguished among Crcesus'g 
heaps, and yet he would have been the richer for 
it. And thus, though our advantages according 
to nature should not be very significant in the 
composition of a happy life, nevertheless they come 
into it; and since we are agreed in this, that a 
natural inclination thrusts us upon the pursuit of 
those things which are according to nature, it were 
proper to have an inventory drawn of them, and 
when that is done, we may pick and choose our 
opportunities of inspecting particulars, their extent 
and diameter, the eminence of their properties, and 
in what degree they promote the happiness of life ; 
and the nature of ail those advantages which are 
so small as to be in a manner undiscernable. In 
short, what occasion is there for making many 
words about a matter decided ? For nobody 
questions but the summum bonum is analogous and 
proportioned to the capacity and nature of the 
thing to which it is a summum bonum. ; and that, 
because every being loves itself. Did ever any 
one yet designedly abandon either all of itself, or 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 205^ 

part of itself, or so much as the functions and fa- 
culties of any part of itself, or stand off from any 
of those circumstances which are according to 
nature, or any influence or posture of them ? Or 
did it ever grow utterly insensible of its original 
constitution? No, there is not a being in nature but 
makes much of all advantages, little or great. 
Upon what account therefore is man sq singular 
as to relinquish himself, to discount his body, 
and take up with a summum bonum uneommensu- 
rate to the whole of his person ? It is determined 
and confessed not only among the stoics, but all 
parties whatever, that there must be an analogy 
between the summum bonum and the nature of 
man : but how so? if, consistently with that analo- 
gy, the principal good of every thing must lie with- 
in the more eminent and distinguishing part of its 
nature : for in that sense the stoics understand our 
summum bonum. So that you have no more to do 
but to make a change in the first principles of na- 
ture ! and, quitting what you have asserted, that 
every animal is no sooner born than engaged to 
the love, and taken up with the tuition and de- 
fence of itself, to maintain henceforward, that the 
best affections of every living creature are only laid 
out upon its distinguishing excellences and privi- 
leges, and all iis care and attendance engrossed by 
them ! and that every other being solicits the wel- 
fare of no more than the worthiest and noblest part 
of itself! Though which way that noblest part 



t06 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

should be such, unless in respect of some other no- 
ble and worthy part, is unintelligible enough ! And 
if that part claims a share too in our favourable in- 
tentions, why should not the summum bonum or 
the full measure of all that is desirable, be thought 
equivalent to an aggregate of all, or at least, the 
greater and choicest part of those things which we 
are capacitated to desire? It is equally Phidias's bu- 
siness to work a piece of carving, all himself; or to 
undertake the finishing of what another band has 
left imperfect. And in this case he is an emblem 
of wisdom, which does not create men, but gives 
the finishing strokes. Not but that she must 
well weigh the steps which nature has made, if she 
designs there shall be no defects in her work. 
Very well ! In what condition do we come out of 
the hands of nature? And what is the proper office 
and province of wisdom ? What is there wanting 
for her to make up ? Is there nothing else to be 
consummated but the operations of the intellectual 
faculties, which is but a periphrasis for our reason? 
Why then indeed a virtuous life must necessarily 
be the sole and utmost good of man, because vir- 
tue is the perfection and accomplishment of reason. 
Or if the body alone is to be put into the best con- 
dition, then let our summum bonum be patched up 
out of health, ease, beauty, &c. But because we 
are seeking after the summum bonum of human na- 
ture entire, what should hinder us from taking a 
view of the result of the question so stated ? That 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 20? 

all the offices and efforts of wisdom are directed to 
the improvement and elevation of human nature, 
is universally confessed. And yet nothing will 
serve some people's turn (to let you see that the stoics 
are not the only men in the world from whom I 
differ) but summum-bonums which are not subject 
to our discretion and choice ; as if we were no more 
than animated mechanism : while others of the con- 
trary extreme, take not the least notice of any thing 
but the. mind, as if a man's body were no more 
than a chim&ra, and as if the mind itself had not 
its own corporeal seat and vehicle, but were a sort 
of abstracted being disengaged from all matter, 
(which is such a being as I know not what to make 
of) and so were to be satiated with virtue alone, 
and had no inclination to repose and freedom from 
pain. Now every individual of these two factions 
might with as good reason entertain a partiality 
for the left side of his body, in opposition to the 
right ; or shake hands with Herillus, stop at the 
operations of the judgment, and set aside the prac- 
tical concurrence of the will. For so far they are 
all alike, tliat every man's hypothesis is not a whole 
one, while he takes in as much of human nature as 
he pleases, and leaves us the rest. So that only 
they can have effectually and fully notified the 
summum bonum of man, who have depreciated no 
one part of his body, or power of his soul. But 
because, Cato, no philosopher, will put you upon 
proving that virtue is the main excellency and best 



208 CICERO OF M6RAL ENDS. 

accomplishment of human nature, and because wise 
and good men are looked upon as instances of an 
adequate perfection, you are always flashing this 
concession upon our understandings. Whereas 
every animal has some good quality predominant in 
him ; as for example, a horse or a dog : and yet 
his health and ease are things which turn to account. 
Accordingly virtue being the first and most tran- 
scendent qualification of human nature, man takes 
the denomination of perfect from that sovereign in- 
gredient of his perfection. Seriously the different 
methods and processes of nature ought to have 
been better considered by you. When she has 
ripened men into philosophers, it is not necessary 
that she should do by their bodies as if they were 
so many stalks of corn at full age, leave them be- 
hind for stubble, or loose straws. No ; she accepts 
of the due shadings and masterly touches without 
expunging the out-lines herself had adjusted. Rea- 
son is an addition and superstructure upon sense, 
and when it comes to take its place, cannot be sup- 
posed to exterminate the other. The cultivation 
of a vine consists in taking such a just care of it, as 
that all its parts may thrive: now suppose (as for 
explication and instruction-sake you stoics never 
make any scruple of putting imaginary cases) sup- 
pose, I say, this faculty of cultivation lay within the 
vine, no doubt it would set a higher value upon 
itself than upon all the substance of the vine, 
and determine for itself that nothing in the vine be- 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 209 

side is comparable to it ; and yet it would not wil- 
lingly be destitute of whatever else in the vine con- 
curs towards the Support and improvement of it. 
In like manner when reason comes into play, and 
exercises the supreme authority ; the prima natu- 
rce, the antecedent provisions of nature y become 
subjects and vassals to it : and yet the sensitive 
part is as serviceable as ever, both to nature and 
itself. In the mean time reason is to execute that 
regal office which she holds, in all the parts of it, 
and regulate the whole se?ies of life. Now these 
things laid together, who can choose but be sur- 
prised at the inconsistency of the stoics ? They at- 
tribute it to the opjxig, or natural appetite, to duty 
and to virtue itself, the custody of those things 
which are according to nature ; but when they take 
a flight to their summum bonum, these are all left 
behind, and rather than they shall be shut up to- 
gether into one and the same end, one and the 
same energy of the will is subdivided, and these 
things we are to make our choice, and those we are to 
pursue. You assure us notwithstanding that if any 
thing beside virtue has any relation to the hap- 
piness of life, there can be no such thing as virtue. 
Whereas, on the contrary it is impossible for vir- 
tue to commence, unless her acceptances and refu- 
sals be allowed to go along with the account of the 
summum bonum. For if these are taken away, im- 
mediately we slide into Aristo's absurdities, for- 
getting those very principles out of which we ex- 

SITS 



510 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

tracted virtue ; or if they are dispensed with, hut, 
not so as to retain their relation to the summum 
bonum, then we are in a direct road to the extrava- 
gances of Herillus, make life to be twofold, and 
institute a double rule of it answerable to his brace 
of distinct summum bonums, which, if they had 
been any, must have been united ; whereas now 
a days they are set at distances wide enough. To 
see the ungainliness of some people ! It is plain 
you are got on the wrong side of the hedge, for 
that unless the antecedent provisions of nature be 
reckoned along with virtue into the total of the 
summum bonum, we turn virtue into an impossibi- 
lity. For genuine virtue, which we have now been 
in quest of, never neglects any part of human na- 
ture, but consults for the whole, whereas the virtue 
which the stoics patronise, takes one part of human 
nature into its protection, and leaves the rest 
to shift for itself. The earliest essays of appetite 
tend toward the securing of that condition of nature 
wherein we are born, and could our constitution 
speak, it would second me. Well but, say you, 
that is before it appears what it is to which nature 
has a principal regard. And let that be assigned 
as soon as you please ; will this proposition fare the 
worse, no part of our nature is to be overlooked? 
Now if we are made up of nothing more than pure 
reason, then can our ultimate good be made up of 
nothing but pure virtue. But if we have bodies too, 
then is this the consequence of resting in any such 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 211 

supposition, that so much of our nature as antece- 
dently to that supposition we adhered to, in the re- 
sult we are obliged to forgo; that is to say, if we 
will live according to nature, the only way is to 
desert her. As we have known some philosophers 
that when they have come within sight of objects of 
a more eminent and glorious kind, have 'bid adieu 
to the senses from which their first measures were 
taken ; even so the speculators of your order, when 
they had been viewing the graces and charms of 
imrtue through the inclinations of human nature, 
flung away the telescope, and remembering imper- 
fectly that all desirable or valuable beings are such 
throughout, and from one to the other, they have 
sapped the very foundations, before they were 
aware, of that which they so much esteem and ad- 
mire. For which reason, I conceive, all the seve- 
ral parties that have established honeste vivere, a 
good and virtuous life, for their summum bonum, 
have been overseen in that respect. Though some 
have had better luck than others. Pyrrho came 
by the worst of all, while he magnified virtue at 
such a rate as to make every thing else absolutely 
worthless and insipid. Aristo was not altogether 
so unmerciful ; but as an occasion and motive for 
the inclinations of- a wise man to work upon, has 
afforded him any subject of thought or object of 
imagination that at any time falls in his way. And 
forasmuch as he was pleased to vouchsafe natural 
inclination something to trust to, he got the start 



212 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

of Pyrrho ; but came behind others of the same 
kidney upon this account, that he has quitted the 
first provisions of nature. The stoics are so far 
cater-cousins to these philosophers, that they con- 
fine the summum bonum to virtue, but then, as in 
reference to their fixing a principle of duty they 
are better advised than Pyrrho, so they have suc- 
ceeded much beyond Aristo by shunning his occa- 
sional subjects and objects. But then again, in par- 
ing away the advantages from the substance of the 
summum bonum which they confess are natural, and 
simply eligible, they play fast and loose with na- 
ture, and border upon Aristo; seeing as he con- 
jured up his riddle of occasional subjects and objects, 
so they taking up the first provisions of nature di- 
vide them from the substance of human good, and 
allow them no place in the consideration of moral 
ends. Now in representing them under the notion of 
things eligible, they seem to assent to the suggestions 
of nature, until they come to deny the subserviency 
of those things to the happiness of life, and then 
they have done with her. Thus far I have prose, 
cuted the proof of that allegation that Zeno had no 
real inducement to found a faction contradistinct 
to the order of the old philosophers. Let us now 
bethink ourselves of proceeding to new matter — 
But perhaps, Cato, you may have some animadver- 
sions to interpose, or however I shall tire you. 
No remarks till you have made an end, said he, 
and the longer you discourse, the better. It is a 
felicity I am proud of, said I, the liberty of con- 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 213 

terring notes about the nature of virtue with so 
jyreat a patron and example of it in every species, 
as Cato. First then observe that the stoics are 
but sharers with ail other philosophers who make 
virtue the full and ultimate good of man, in their 
characteristical position, their axiom of axioms, 
that virtue is our only good, and an honest life the 
perfection and consummation of our nature and our 
happiness. And as for what you urge, that if we 
reckon upon any thing beside virtue, we destroy 
the being of it, the parties aforementioned can 
object as much. Though I have been rather 
disposed to make a judgment of Zeno's exceptions 
against Polemo, especially because they start fair 
from the same first principles, the former having 
borrowed them from the latter; and to take notice 
where Zeno makes his first halt, and how. he picks a 
quarrel, than of his character in respect of tnose who, 
notwithstanding that they held the same opinions 
with Zeno and Polemo, and supported them by the 
same arguments,declared that their summum bonums 
were no subsequent emergencies of nature. Another 
thing which scandalizes me is this, that after you have 
been broaching your doctrine of virtue's being our 
only good, you require as a thing necessary, that 
certain principles or materials congruous and well 
adapted to nature come under our choice, in order 
to the being of virtue. Is it a choice fit for virtue 
to be built upon, when the chief and ultimate good 
embraced is capable of, and imperfect without 



214 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

additions ? Certainly the summum bonum, or total 
of human good, ought to enclose every thing that 
is desirable or eligible, and he that has made prize 
of it, has already all that he can have or wish to 
have. Further; let us with the Epicurean single 
out pleasure for the total of human good, and do 
we not presently come to a plain rule and road of 
practice? Is it not apparent and notorious, the 
end which the men of that denomination propose 
to themselves in discharging offices or duties, and 
how far they are concerned to act or not to act ; 
and what they are to pursue and what to decline? 
This is something like! here you have no sooner 
a summum bonum but you understand, of your own 
accord, what are the duties and practices which 
match with it. But for your summum bonum of 
virtue and honesty, it takes up so much room, as 
vou have extended it, that there is not a corner left 
for any such thing as a principle of duty and action. 
And this is that for which yourselves no less than 
the friends of occasional subjects and objects are so 
much at a loss. You, for your parts, are driven 
back again to nature, and the best answer she re- 
turns you is a reproof, because you did not fetch 
from her as well your ultimate good of life, as your 
principles of practice, there being a near connection 
and intercourse between all principles of action and 
the, final good. She will tell you that as Aristo has 
been utterly discountenanced, and with very good 
reason, for supposing a parity between and setting 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 215 

an equal .value upon all things which are not of 
the nature of virtue and vice ; so Zeno is under a 
great mistake, since with him nothing but what is 
matter of virtue and vice is in the way to the sum- 
mum bonum, and other things make nothing for the 
happiness of life, though they have that in them 
which is sufficient to sway the will; as if any thing 
out of the summum bonum could command such a 
choice or propensity. What can be more absurd 
and preposterous than this method of yours, first 
to find out the summum bonum, and then to retire 
back to the constitution of nature for your principle 
of practice or duty ? Do not mistake yourselves. 
We are not first called upon by principles of 
practice or duty to pursue those things which are 
according to nature, but these are the things which 
set our inclinations on work, and invites us to 
practice. Next we are to try what we can make 
of your concise conclusions or consectaries, as you 
call them. And first of all for the wonder of 
laconism! Whatever is good, is praise-ivorthy ; 
whatever is praise-xvorthy, is matter of virtue and 
honour; therefore whatever is good is matter of 
virtue and honour. This it is to be run through 
with a bulrush f But who, do you think, will 
connive at the major or first proposition? Grin 
case it should be received, where is the need of the 
second ? For if whatsoever is good is praise- 
worthy, whatsoever is good must be matter of 
virtue and honour. Who, I say, will surrender 



£16 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 



the premisses to you, Pyrrho, Aristo, and their 
complices excepted? Now with all these profes- 
sors you are out of conceit. As for Aristotle, 
Xenocrates, and the rest of that party, they will 
not let you run away with it. Health, strength, 
riches, fame, and so forth, are good, say they, though 
they are not praise- worthy ; and what if virtue far 
surpasses every other human good or excellency, 
must therefore virtue alone comprehend the whole 
substance of our good? Then again, what expect 
you from Epicurus, Hieronymus, and as many as 
have espoused Carneades's summum bonum ? Will 
these, can you imagine, after they have deducted 
virtue out of that total, comply with your demands ? 
or from Callipho, or Diodorus, who have superin- 
duced upon virtue that which is heterogeneous and. 
distinct from it? Or is it Cato's custom to lay 
down disputed premisses, and then make his own 
conclusions ? There is your sorites also condemned 
by us; whatever is good is worthy of our good 
wishes ; whatever is worthy of our good wishes, is 
desirable; whatever is desirable is fraise-xvor thy ; 
and so on, for I shall trace it no further. It is 
enough to deny you what we denied you before, 
that whatever is desirable is praise- worthy. As 
wretchedly shallow is that other consectary, that a 
man may boast of the constituents of a happy life, 
wherein he were not excusable if any thing beside 
virtue were of the essence of it. For that matter 
Polemo will never stand out with Zeno ; no, nor 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 217 

Polemo's preceptor, nor any one of that or of the 
other fraternities that compound their summum 
bonum of virtue and other things, though virtue 
they account the sovereign simple. And it is 
granted that virtue has incomparably the advantage, 
that this, and this alone, affords matter of boasting, 
and that whoever has this within him, may be hap- 
py, under the want of all the rest. But to say, 
that nothing must be counted good but virtue!. 
Polemo will never be brought to it. Neither will 
so much as this aphorism, that there is any thing 
in a happy life xvhich affords matter of boasting 
be yielded by those who receive not virtue into 
their summum bonum; though by fits they will 
maintain, that pleasure may be fairly a subject of 
ostentation. At last you must be convinced then, 
either that you have assumed what will never be 
granted you; or, that if it should be granted you, 
it will do you no maimer of service. The truth on 
it is, whenever we are meditating conclusions of this 
nature, it ought to be the business and aim of philo- 
sophy and philosophers, especially when they are in- 
quiring after the summum bonum y to rectify and settle 
the counsels and conduct of life much rather than 
the construction of words. Your short and poinant 
demonstrations, with which you confess you are so 
much taken, will they rescue a man from his pre- 
judices? How pain comes to be an evil, is a point 
debated, and we would be rightly informed about 
it. That it is hateful, vexatious, disagreeable t© 

2 F 



218 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS, 

man's nature, and hard to be borne, the stoics 
will tell you as well as other people; but then 
having nothing in it of dishonesty, lewdness, immo- 
rality, obliquity, or turpitude, it cannot be possibly 
an evil. Now when you have laid this considera- 
tion before a timorous man, though he may keep 
his countenance, and not think it worth his while 
to laugh, yet, I warrant him, he returns every jot 
as substantial a coward as he came to his instruc- 
tors. It is very strenuously asserted by you, that 
so long as any man conceives pain to be an evil, 
he cannot but want the true spirit of fortitude. 
And will he not therefore become strangely strength- 
ened and animated when he apprehends it to be, 
as yourselves describe it, a sore affliction, and 
hardly to be endured! Verbal distinctions and 
quibbles are but a very poor antidote against a 
real consternation. Will you stand by it still, that 
if we can make the least fissure in your philosophy, 
there is an end of the whole? What is your opi- 
nion? Is it only a syllable, or so, that I have 
battered down ? Or have I laid all open for a 
considerable length together? Or what if the 
method, coherence, and articulations of the stoical 
hypothesis are so just and exact as you say they 
are ? Have we any reason to befrind consequences 
grounded upon false principles, because they are 
consistent with themselves, and answer the end 
for which they were advanced? Zeno lost his way, 
and made off from nature as soon as he sallied 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 219 

forth. And having resolved the summum bonum 
into that excellency of soul which we call virtue, 
and denied that any thing can be truly good beside 
virtue and honesty, and that if other things are 
allowed the discriminations of better and worse, 
virtue cannot stand upon its legs ; having begged 
all this, he rightly pursued his inferences. It is 
true ; he did so, and I dare say nothing to the 
contrary. But then those inferences are such 
manifest falsities, that we can no longer doubt of 
error in the principles from which they are de- 
duced, according to the known logical rule, if the 
conclusion be false, then the premisses from which 
that conclusion fairly follows can never be true- 
And that same syllogistical process, if that be so, 
then this is so ; but this is not so, therefore that is 
not so, is, in the opinion of the logicians, not only 
certain, but so clear and apparent as not to want 
a reason to back it. And therefore your inferences 
failing, your principles come to nothing. And this is 
the fate of your consequential doctrines too, that all 
parties mho fall short of your standard of wisdom 
are equally unhappy ; that the wist are as happy as it 
is possible for them to be ; that no one good action 
is better than another ; no one ill action worse; 
which at first appearance makes a fine shew, but 
will not bear the test of second thoughts. Indeed 
there is so little bottom for the parities which Zeno 
has supposed, that nature, truth, and common 
sense cry out upon him for the wildness of the 



ttO CICEftO Of MORAL ENDS. 

supposition. And to mend the matter, the little 
Carthaginian, (your Citiaean friends, I need not 
tell you, are a Phoenician colony) when he could 
not carry his cause, and the nature of things got 
the better of him; what does he, like a cunning 
gamester ', but pervert the signification of words ? 
And the things which before passed under the 
character of good, are now to retain no better epi- 
thets than those of convenient, commodious, and 
suitable to nature! Nor was it Jong before he con- 
fessed thus much, that a wise man, or a man com- 
pletely happy, is yet happier in the possession of 
those things, which we must not upon any terms 
call good, than he can be without them. For he 
grants that they have their significancy in the na- 
ture of things, and that although Plato be not a 
giant in wisdom, yet he is not quite so bad as 
Dionysius the tyrant; there being no hopes that 
the latter will ever become a wise man, though it 

is not impossible but the former may. So it is 

* 
advisable for Plato to live on; but the sooner the 

other hangs himself the better. And that foras- 
much as some sins are wider deviations from duty 
than others, some sins are venial, others not; and 
that some men are born and bred up to that 
degree of folly, as to be utterly incapacitated for 
the attaining of wisdom ; but others might acquire 
it, if they would mind their business. And thus 
he expresses himself in a language different from 
that of all other philosophers, though he holds 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 2S 1 

their opinions ; and notwithstanding all his fury 
against any acknowledgment of the goodness of 
those things which others dignified with the title 
of good, he sets as high a price upon them as they. 
What projects then and proclamations might he 
have in his head when he reformed the terms! 
Had it been but to set up a diversity as well in 
sentiments as in words from the doctrine of the 
peripatetics, he ought to have reduced the weight 
and worth of those inferior advantages somewhat 
below their calculation. And then, with regard 
to that which is of the last and largest importance, 
a happy life, you are positive it is the sole effect 
of virtue, and no such thing as a congefies of 
whatsoever substances or circumstances are suffi- 
cient for the occasions of human nature. Either 
things or words are the subject-matter of all dis- 
putations ; and whether you do not understand 
the thing, or misunderstand the name of it, you 
are betrayed into a double contest about both. 
But if we have not fallen beforehand under such 
an ignorance or misconstruction, then are we to 
take as much care as we can that the words we 
make use of be well known and received, and ex- 
pressive of what they are applied to. Will any 
body, if once made sensible how right the ancients 
were in their judgment upon the state of things, 
call in question the aptness and propriety of their 
word^ ? But to digress a little from the vindication 
of their terms, let us take a slight view of their 



225 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

tenets. They suggest, that so soon as the mind 
of man apprehends this or that to be consonant 
and suitable to nature, it is awakened into a good- 
liking and desire of it : that whatever is according 
to nature challenges a place in our esteem, and is 
to be valued up to the proportion of its significancy : 
that of the things which are according to nature 
there are two sorts, either those that carry no such 
principle in their constitution as that of the desire 
aforesaid ; and to these the denomination of me- 
ritorious and laudable cannot belong : or else those 
which take in such satisfactory and delightful sen- 
sations as are proper to animals, together with 
those operations and exercises of the rational fa- 
culties which are peculiar to man : that the latter 
of these, when they are reasonable and regular, 
are styled honest, virtuous, becoming, and commend- 
able ; the former natural advantages, which in 
conjunction with what is honest and virtuous con- 
stitute the full measure of a happy life : that 
honesty and virtue are infinitely superior to all 
those other advantages, which Zeno will not suffer 
us to call good, though they who give them that 
name, ascribe no more excellency to them than 
Zeno : that whenever we are left, suppose, to the 
choice of virtue with health of body, or without 
it, we are immediately determined by the voice of 
nature, which to prefer : that still probity and 
virtue are things of such an over-ruling obliga- 
tion and consequence, and of so much higher 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 223 

account than whatever can come in competition 

with them, and when once we are come to a 

certainty as to the matter of truth or falsehood, 

right or wrong, we must neither be influenced 

by any dread of punishment or hopes of reward : 

that those powers and perfections which adorn 

our nature are an over-match for the greatest 

difficulties, hardships, and adversities ; not that 

we are to make a mere jesting matter of these, no 

disparagement, say they, to the force of virtue; 

but this we are to conclude upon, that things of 

this rank concur but subordinately and secondarily 

toward the making of our lives happy or unhappy. 

In a word, Zeno sets forth the inferior advantages 

of life under the titles of valuable, eligible, and 

suitable to nature ; and they think fit to give them 

the appellation of good, and the largest and best 

share of them, they throw into the definition of a 

bappy life. With Zeno that alone passes for good 

which is desirable in its kind : and his happiness 

is a good and virtuous one. So that, Cato. when 

we come to argue about the thing itself, it is 

plain we are cordially agreed, and to all intents 

and purposes of the same side and sentiments, 

provided our terms be once exchanged. Zeno, 

I am confident, could not but perceive as much, 

though he was borne away by an enthusiasm 

of big and bouncing words. For either he de- 
cs JD 

signed that the words he used should be under- 
stood according to the genuine and common signi- 



224 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

fixation of them; and then Pyrrho, Aristo, and 
himself are all of a piece : or if he will not come 
in a partner with them ; for what reason does he 
distinguish himself in expression from some others, 
whose principles he cannot distinguish from his 
own ? Let the old platonists and their scholars 
come out of their graves, and thus undeceive you, 
u We have heard a great deal, Cato, of your 
" honesty and love of philosophy ; how sincere you 
" are in the administration of justice ; how con- 
" scientious in attesting matter of fact ; and there- 
" fore it is a mighty surprise to us, that the stoics 
" have heaved us out of your better thoughts, 
" though they comprehend neither more nor less 
" about the nature of good and evil, than what 
" our brother Polemo here had thrown in Zeno's 
u way. It is true, the terms and forms of speech 
4C wherein they deliver themselves, kindle at the 
" first hearing a sudden veneration ; but when the 
(lC substance of the matter has been well examined, 
" they will give a man a fit of laughing. If there-' 
" fore you resolve to stand by the opinions they 
" advance, why will you not assert them in proper 
" words? Or if you were prevailed upon by the 
" argument of authority, how is it that an upstart 
" has got the ascendant, to the exclusion of all us 
" and of Plato himself? It is your ambition to be 
" serviceable at the head of affairs; and who so 
" fit as we to qualify and accomplish you for the 
" service and support of the commonwealth, in 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 525 

" that high character which you sustain? Political 
"precepts it has been one of our chief concerns to 
" look after and lay down: and there is nothing 
" that Hates to civil government, whether as to 
" its kinds and conditions, revolutions, laws, pro- 
" visions, customs, or the tempers and behaviour 
" of the people, but what our directions extend to. 
" Further; eloquence, you know, is a statesman } s 
" beauty j and your particular talent. O ! what 
" prodigious advantages might you reap if you 
" would look into those volumes which we have 
" wrote relating to it?" Suppose the great sages 
harangued you thus, what have you to say for your- 
self? Why after you had taught them their lesson, 
said he, the defendant would retain you to speak 
for him too 1 In the mean time I should crave the 
liberty of replying in my place, but that at present 
I shall be better pleased to hear you out, and 
promise ere long a full answer to the plat ovists 
and their lawyer together! Which, undoubtedly, 
Cato, will have nothing but truth in it, and there- 
fore must run to this effect : " Gentlemen, I 
" have always had a profound esteem for you ; 
" you are persons of no vulgar capacities, and your 
" authority is very considerable, but excuse me if 
" I think the stoics upon your shoulders have 
" seen further than you could, and both concocted 
" and cleared the argument with more spirit and 
" force of reasoning. These were the men who 
" first found it out, that a good state of health is not 
2 © 



226 CICERO 0£ MORAL ENDS. 

" a thing desirable, but purely eligible, as being fm- 
" properly accounted good, though it is valuable 
" too in some measure ; not that they ascribe a 
" tittle more or less to it, than you that never 
" scruple to give it the name of good, Besides, 
" there is another thing which is highly provoking, 
" that you ancients, as if you had been barbarous 
" born and bred, (as we Romans tell one another 
" sometimes,) are persuaded that a good and vir- 
" tuous man had much better live in health, repu- 
" tation, and plenty, than, as Ennius's Alcmason, 
" Circumvent us morbo, <§'c. With sickness curst, 
" an exile, and a beggar. It is certain, you were 
" strangely overtaken, in supposing that the former 
u leads the happier, the better, and the more 
" desirable life of the two. The stoics are so 
" wise as to assign such a life no more than the 
"preference upon choice, because though it does 
" not surpass the other in any degree of felicity, 
" yet it is better accommodated to nature ; but else 
" all men whatsoever, that are not absolutely wise, 
" are shut up in one and the same circle of un- 
" happiness. This you were little aware of, but 
" the* stoics have since discovered it, and resolved, 
" that libertines and parricides are upon an equa- 
" lity of happiness with the soberest and sincerest 
" of us all, if he step short of a consummated wis- 
" dom" And then you must bring in some of 
your unresembling similitudes ! As if Bny body 
were ignorant that if a club of swimmers are to 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 227 

rise up out of the water, they that are almost re- 
turned to the top, are nearer advanced to the region 
of respiration, than they that are left at the bottom, 
and yet are as little able to breath ? But will it 
follow that we must be as miserable as it is possi- 
ble for us to be, if we do not come up to the very 
utmost verge of virtue, let us make never so suc- 
cessful progresses, never so near approaches to 
it ? By all means ! For we must be either eagles, 
or stark Wind ! And therefore Plato's prospect 
into sense and wisdom, was no better than that of 
Phalaris. And wherefore, I beseech you? the 
reason is plain. A puppy-dog, that is within a few 
hours of the age of seeing, is as blind as another 
that is newly whelped. These allusions, Cato, are 
far from being parallel to the state of the matter 
in question, forasmuch as they imply, that though 
you remove and depart as far as you can from 
that which you avoid, yet is it all one as if you had 
never avoided it, till you stand at the widest dis- 
tance from it conceivable : For a swimmer does 
not fetch his breath till his head is above water, 
and a whelp sees no more before he sees, than if 
he were never to see. If you are for comparisons, 
what think you of a man with dim eyes, and an- 
other with a distempered body ? These under the 
regimen of a skilful hand gradually recover, the 
one his seeing, the other his health. Which is the 
very case of those who are laying out for virtue, 
they are cured of their ill habits, and their false 



228 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

opinions by degrees. Otherwise you must acknow- 
ledge that Tiberius Gracchus the son was every 
whit as hapoy a man as his father, though the 
latter made it is business to support the common- 
wealth, and the former to ruin it. For though the 
father was not absolutely a wise man, as whence, 
where, or when could you ever produce o<ie? yet 
being sensible of what became him, and what would 
recommend him, he made a good proficiency in the 
practice of virtue. Or let us set your grandfather 
Drusus, and Caius Gracchus his contemporary, 
over against one another. As soon as the latter 
had given the government a wound, still the former 
closed it. Well but impiety and wickedness are 
the origin of infelicity. I grant it ; unhappiness is 
the portion of the unwise ; but for all that, he who 
promotes the good of his countrymen, is not in the 
same latitude of unhappiness with him who wishes 
and endeavours the destruction of them. For as 
fast as we correct the indispositions of the mind, 
we refine it up nearer and nearer to the standard 
of virtue. Now you do not quarrel with us for 
supposing degrees of improvement \ but will by no 
means hear of degrees of reformation. And it were 
pity to let the argument pass unexamined, which 
the stoics bring for the negative : those arts and 
sciences which admit of a possibility of further ad- 
vances and improvement, do not exclude the possi- 
bility of gradual advances in that xvhich is opposite 
unto them ; but virtue absolutely considered admits 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 229 

of no advances or improvements ; therefore vice, 
which is contrary to it, admits of no gradatmis. 
Now the question is, whether uncertainties are to 
be determined from certainties, or certainties be 
over-ruled by uncertainties. That some vices are 
greater than others is not to be denied. But whe- 
ther your summum bonum will admit of additions 
or not, is hardly so clear. And yet you resolve, 
that that which is uncertain shall hold good against 
that which is certain, instead of proceeding from 
that which is certain, to satisfy yourselves about 
that which is uncertain. At this lock we must hold 
you. For if one vice cannot be worse than an- 
other, because nothing can be superadded to that 
which you have taken up with for your ultimate 
good, and yet it is notorious that all vices are not 
equal, it follows that you must turn away your old 
ultimate good, and provide yourselves another. 
For this is a never- failing rule, that when the con- 
sequence is false, the premisses, upon which that 
consequence depends, can never be true. And how 
comes it about that you are so unhappily wedged ? 
Because nothing contents you but a high-flown 
summum bonum to make your brags of. Nay, 
rather than virtue should not be the only good of 
man, we are let loose from all obligations, either 
to take care of our health, or to look after our es- 
tates, to execute public offices, to prosecute any 
concerns, or to discharge any duties of life. Even 
your great catholic good, your principle of honesty 



230 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

and virtue is given up. And this is the very ob- 
jection, which with so much earnestness Chrysip- 
pus urges against Aristo. Now it was the foregoing 
difficulty which gave birth to these malitice j allaci- 
loquentice, in the words of Accius, these wicked' 
effects of sophistry. When you have set all the 
duties of life afloat, wisdom has nothing left to 
support her ; and when you confounded all things 
together at such a rate as to leave no distinctions 
between them, nor matter of option among them, 
you vacated the duties of life ; and thus you be- 
trayed yourself into inconveniences of a much more 
heinous tendency than Aristo ; beside that he went 
through-stitch with simplicity and plainness, where- 
as your people are full of prevarication. Put the 
question to Aristo, whether he accounts as good, 
either freedom from pain, or riches, or health, and 
he will answer you, no. Or whether he looks upon 
their contraries as etil ; no again. Let the same 
questions be proposed to Zeno, and he will return 
you the very same answers. Hereupon we begin 
to stare, and of both demand, how it is possible to 
carry on the purposes of life, if it is all alike to us, 
whether we are sick or well, in pain or at ease, 
starving with cold and hunger, or in good case and 
clothing. Now Aristo will tell us roundly ; you 
may live better than so many princes if you please, 
and do just as you please, and never know what it 
is to suffer, to desire, or to fear. And what says 
Zeno ? That this is all madness, and such doctrine 



BOOK THE FOURTH. £31 

as frustrates the very ends of living; that virtue 
and turpitude are as distant from one another as 
the poles ; that as for other things, no difference lies 
between them ; that these intermediate things, 
which are upon a perfect parity in respect of one 
another (keep your countenance if you can, for 
there is something very pleasant a coming) are 
threefold, either such as are eligible, such as are 
to be refused, or such as are indifferent. Say you 
so? How came they then to be perfectly alike 
before ? They are so still, say you, in the relation 
which they bear to virtue and vice. A great piece 
of news indeed ! However let us hear you out. 
Your instances, quoth Zeno, of health, riches, 
freedom from pain, I cannot dignify with the title 
of good, but if you please, I will call them ^0737- 
/xeW in the Greek, which has been translated pro- 
ducta, prceposita, preecipua, (the t vo last words are 
the best, the other sounds harsh,) prejtrables. As 
I dare not call want, diseases, and pain, evils, but 
I make them reject area, what zee have reason to 
avoid. Accordingly, we must not say that we de- 
sire or wish for, but that we choose and prefer the 
former; nor that, on the other hand, we avoid, 
but that we set aside the latter. Now for<Aristotle 
and the rest of Plato's retinue; what say they? 
Why that that which is according U nature, is to 
be called good; and that tvhicb is otbei'u - \ evil. 
"What think you now of this master of yours t Does 
he not say the same thing vvuii Arisio, wiiiie he 



332 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

means otherwise ? and does he not mean the same 
thing as Aristotle and his brethren, though he will 
not say the same ? and since he means the same, 
why can he not express himself as other people 
would? At least let hiin convince me that my 
supposing money to be something preferable, rather 
than something good, and pain to be rather some- 
thing that molests a man, tries his patience, and 
is contrary to his nature, than something evil, 
weans me ever the more from too great a love of 
the first, or makes me ever the less resigning to the 
impressions of the last. Our old friend and ac- 
quaintance, Marcus Piso, used to make very good 
sport with the maxims of the stoics, particularly 
upon the topic before us. Be it so, said he, 
inches are not bonum, good, but prcepositum, eligi- 
ble. And what are we the better now? Is our 
avarice checked upon it? Prcepositum, indeed, for 
a word, has as many syllables again as bonum : and 
what of that ? But it has more in it yet. How 
the word bonum comes to be applicable to riches^ 
I cannot inform you ; but I conceive the name of 
prcepositum is conferred upon them, because of 
their having the preference in general* Upon 
which account they cannot but be something extra- 
ordinary ! And this was his way of proving that 
Zeno seemed to signify, when he disposed of riches 
among his praposita or preferables, that they are 
of greater consideration and value than Aristotle 
had supposed them when he allowed them to be 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 233 

something good, but yet no very desirable good 
neither, nor of such a sigmificancy as to weigh any 
thing in opposition to virtue and honesty. And 
so he went through all the terms with which Zeno 
equivocated, and made it out, that he had appro- 
priated higher titles to those things which he denied 
to have any goodness in them, and that he had 
branded those things which he would not endure to 
be called evil, with more ghastly appellations, than 
ever a one of us. After this manner the great 
Piso, that entertained such a singular esteem for 
you (and you know full well how great it was) 
came over the stoics. Two or three words more 
to close with, and 1 have done : for it would take 
up -too much time to confute your assertions in 
the detail. It is the same necromantic language 
that has reared the scene of every wise mans uni- 
versal monarchy, encircled him with mountains of 
crowns and sceptres, and created him proprietor 
of heaven and earth. It is by virtue of this 
that he monopolizes all the charms of beauty, 
and all the privileges and character of a denizen : 
but as for your fools, (that is, the rest of the 
world) they are no better than madmen, and in 
circumstances quite contrary to those above men- 
tioned. These are your 7raga8o§a, in our lan- 
guage admirabilia, paradoxes. But let us. come 
forward, and look through them, and we shall find 
little cause for wonder. It is but comparing your 
words and the true meaning of them together, and 

2 H 



234 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

the dispute is at an end. Yon affirm that all sins 
are equal. Now I do not design to attack this 
principle in the same manner as I have formerly 
done in defence of Lucius Murena against your 
indictment. Then I had a great many unphiloso- 
phical auditors, and condescended to the capacities 
of 1ne crowd. But this time I shall handle the 
matter a little more distinctly. I ask then how it 
comes about that all sins are equal ? Because no 
one virtue is such any more than another, nor any 
one vice more a vice than another. This, let me 
tell you, has been vigorously controverted; but let 
us proceed and discuss those direct arguments by 
which you prove all sins to be equal. If among 
the strings of a lute there is never a one in tune, 
they are qjl alike out of tune ; therefore the inhar- 
moniousness of sins in general is the same, and 
consequently they are equal. Thus you think to 
impose upon us with ambiguities. What if one 
string is out of tune as zvell as another ? Does it 
follow too that it is as much out of tune as another? 
If not, you will get no ground by your similitude. 
For what if one sort of avarice is as properly ava- 
rice as another ? Shall we thence infer that one sort 
is avarice in as great a degree as the other? And 
even as pat and parallel is your simile of the pilot, 
who, -as it is hinted, is equally in fault if the ship 
happens to be lost through his means, whether the 
cargo be chaff or gold. And so it is all one, if I 
do violence lo another man, whether that other be 
my father or my servant. This is as much as to 



BOOK THE FOURTH. £35 

say, never any of you knew that the pilot, as such, 
is not to concern himself about the lading of the 
vessel. Be it fraitecl with gold or chaff, his know- 
ledge of steering is neither the .greater nor the less : 
whereas everv body is or ought to be sensible 
how widely the relations of parent and servant dif- 
fer from one another; so that notwithstanding it 
is of no moment in the business of steering a ship, 
what the character is of that which comes to a 
miscarriage, yet a great deal depends upon it in 
the business of duty. Again; if the ship were la- 
den with gold, and cast away through the careless- 
ness of the pilot, he is more in fault than if it had 
been filled with chaff; because there is no art or 
vocation in the wurld but what requires a founda- 
tion of common prudence, as it is called ; certainly no 
man pretending to skill or science ought to be 
without it. Still then we are as much to seek for 
this equality of sins as ever. It is all one for that ; 
the stoics will leave no stone unturned, and thus 
they go on : every sin is an effect of weakness and 
levity ; now for that all unwise people labour, one 
man as much as another, under these two imper- 
fections, it inevitably follows that no one sin can be 
greater than another. But who told them that all 
unzvise men have these imperfections in an equal 
degree ? Was Lucius Tubulus no more chargeable 
with weakness and inconstancy than Pubiius Scce- 
vola his prosecutor ? Or does there not a dispari- 
ty arise out of the nature and circumstances of the 



£36 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

subject-matter of the fault ? So that in proportion 
to the dignity, the bulk, and the number of these, 
an abuse is either more or less aggravate^ or par- 
donable ? Here then, after all (to draw to a con- 
clusion) lies the sole, but fatal mistake of the stoics. 
They flatter themselves that they can clasp-together 
two contrary suppositions. As what can be more 
irreconcileable than, for the same person, to affirm 
that nothing beside virtue has any goodness in it, 
and yet that nature has recommended to our incli- 
nations whatever she has accommodated to the 
uses and purposes of life ? And sometimes they are 
for keeping the track of the first hypothesis, and 
then they run riot with Aristo ; sometimes they 
will scamper away from it, and then, though they 
are superstitiously tenacious of their own terms, 
yet in the substance and sense of their philosophy 
they are peripatetics true-blue; over and above 
that through their obstinate adherence to their sin- 
gularity of expression they contract that moroseness, 
austerity, and vehemence of temper, which they 
discover both in their words and actions, and to 
which Panastius had so great an aversion, that he 
disclaimed as well the rigour of their maxims, as 
their intricate methods of argumentation. He re- 
mitted of the former, and was very shy of the lat- 
ter. Nobody made more use, as you find in his 
writings, of Plato, Aristotle, Xenocrates, Theo- 
prastus, and Dicaearchus, authors upon which I 
could heaitly wish you too would bestow due at- 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 237 

tention and application. It grows late, and it is 
time for me to think of going homeward, and 
therefore I shall shut up all with this proposal, 
that our conferences may go on. O, said Cato, 
by all means ! We cannot better employ our leisure, 
and at our next meeting I expect you will be pa- 
tient till I have disarmed you at all points. Let it 
suffice, that whereas there is no notion of yours in 
which I can acquiesce, there is nothing that dis- 
pleases you in stoicism beside uncommon signifi- 
cations of our terms : remember that. We will 
consider of it, said I, but to spring a doubt at part- 
ing is unfair. And so we withdrew. 



CICERO 



OF 



MORAL END S 



BOOK V. 



Having been a by-stander, my Brutus, at an en- 
gagement whicfi happened, and it was no new thing, 
between Antiochus and Marcus Piso, in the Ptole- 
masium, the school so called ; and with me, my 
brother Quintus, Titus Pomponius, and my brother 
Lucius ; brother I mean, in respect of the love that is 
betwixt us, though no more than "my cousin-german 
in reality ; we agreed, by common consent, that the 
academy should be our walking-place for the after- 
noun, where we knew we should meet, all that 
part of the day, with no disturbance. Accordingly, 
at the hour appointed, we rendezvoused at Piso's 
house, chaited-over the short mile we had to walk 
from IMphylus's quarters, and so made our entrance 
into the academy, a recess very deservedly cele- 
brated ; and, according to oar wishes, we had it 
all to ourselves. Well! said Piso, whether it be 
the effect of any innate principle, or no more than a 
prejudice) I cannot say ; but sure I am, it makes a 



240 GICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

stronger impression upon us, if we behold a place 
where any sons oifame have resorted heretofore, 
than either to be told the history of their lives, or 
to be conversant with their writings. I know it by 
myself at this time. These walls put me in mind 
of Plato, who, says tradition, held his disputations 
within them. There lay his little garden, which 
affects more than my memory, for, methinks, I see 
him walking in it just before me. There sat Speu- 
sippus, here Xenocrates, there his pupil Polemo; 
that very seat was his, which we are now looking 
on. So when our hostilia at home salutes my eye- 
sight, (not the new hall of that name, which though 
it be the larger in compass, is less than the other 
to me,) presently my head is full of Scipio, Cato, 
Lselius, but especially of my grandfather. And 
for this reason so great use is made of the circum- 
stance of place in the art of memory, because the 
idea of place naturally excites us to recollection. 
It is as you say, Piso, said Quintus, In my pas- 
sage hither the Colonean tenement presented itself; 
and I saw as plainly Sophocles in it, as I zealously 
admire and love him. Giving my memory the 
rein, at last I spied out OEdipus too, or the shape 
of him at least, advancing this way, and heard him 
ask in flowing numbers, Where am I? — For my 
part, says Pomponius, I am an Epicurean, though 
you will never let me be one in quiet ; and as we 
came along by Epicurus's gardens, Phaedrus, my 
particular favourite, you know, afforded me a great 



BOOK THE FIFTH. 241 

deal of his conversation, till the old proverb at last 
came into my thoughts, and then I turned them 
and myself from the dead to the living. Though 
it would be impossible for me, were it ever so 
much my desire, to banish Epicurus out of my 
imagination ; for we that are of that family are not 
contented with having the picture of him preserved 
in an ordinary way, but his face must be graven too 
upon the outside of our plate, and the seals of our 
rings. Pomponius is merry, said I : he has lost 
no time at Athens, it seems, and is resolved to 
make out his title to his name. But I am seriously 
persuaded, Piso, of the truth of your observation, 
that the places which they used, have a virtue in 
them to excite, enliven, and feed our conceptions 
about great and eminent men. When you and I 
made a tour to Metapontus, you may remember, 
instead of going directly to my inn, nothing would 
serve my turn but I must pay a visit to the place 
where Pythagoras died, and to the seat that had 
been under him. I must confess there is no part 
of Athens which is not beset with these monuments 
and relics, but you cannot imagine how much that 
portico there strikes my fancy. Not long since 
Carneades had it, and there, to my thinking, he is at 
this time. I have often scanned his features, and am 
apt to believe the very seat yonder misses that burthen 
of good sense which rested there, and the satisfac- 
tion of that voice which came from it. Every man 
in the company, said Piso, has had his own amuse- 

2 i 



242 CICERO OF MORAL EBTES. 

ment, except jour kinsman Lucius ; how does lie 
stand engaged ? For a wager, in the apartment of 
Demosthenes and jEschines, listening, as his gefiius 
and his course of study oblige him, to their oratori- 
cal rencounters. You might have saved yourself 
the trouble of asking, said Lucius and blushed, if 
you had observed my descent to the Phalerieum, 
where, as the report goes, it was a custom with 
Demosthenes to harangue the tide, with a prospect 
of speaking louder one day than the sea could roar. 
And just now I made a digression a little upon the 
right, and took Pericles's tomb in my way. But I 
perceive there is no end on it. From one skirt of 
the city to the other a stranger cannot set his foot 
upon the ground but he treads upon a jewel of an- 
tiquity. The use which a man of understanding 
and learning ought to make of these remains, is to 
spirit himself on, said Piso, in his imitation of illus- 
trious examples. A man of curiosity indeed 
regards them only as the pledges of earlier gene- 
rations. Give us leave therefore, forward as you 
are of yourself, to quicken your emulation, and 
encourage you to copy, as near to the life as you 
can, after those originals, whom you so much desire 
to be better acquainted with. I am to thank you, 
Piso, said I, for your advice to my relation. At the 
same time you may be assured by what you see of 
him, that he practices up to your instructions. 
Whereupon, said he, in a strain of his wonted 
friendliness, it is reasonable that we join forces, 



BOOK THE FIFTH. 243 

and help, all hands, toward the young gentleman's 
improvement; more especially that we initiate him 
in his philosophical studies, for two reasons, first, be- 
cause he has the advantage of so good an example, 
and one so dear as yourself to lead him the w ay ; 
secondly, because they will be a noble adorning 
and superstructure upon the study which he pur- 
sues at present. Not that I believe there is great 
occasion for suggesting this counsel, to one of him- 
self predisposed to take this course ; and who 
minds his business to so good purpose under An- 
tiochus's tuition. I do my best, replied Lucius 
with a modest confusion ; by the way my uncle 
was making mention of Carneades. That is the 
man for my money ; but my infallible guide An- 
tiochus forbids me his company. It is easy to 
foresee, said Piso, what opposition the attempt 
will meet with in the presence of a certain friend of 
ours, (looking at me,) but, for all that, I will ven- 
ture to dissuade you from following the new aca- 
demics, and bespeak you in behalf of the old ones, 
in which number, as Antiochus must needs have 
informed you, beside the academics, properly so 
called, Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemo, Grantor, 
and so forth, are the old peripatetics too, and 
among them Aristotle, their foreman, perhaps, ex- 
cepting Plato, not to be matched among all the 
philosophers. Let me prevail with you to set 
yourself to the reading of them ; you will find they 
will furnish you with helps and directions for all 



244 CICERO Or MORAL ENDS. 

sorts and parts of learning, humanity, history, 
rhetoric, and every other art and science ; in a 
word, a man can never be fit for any matters ex- 
traordinary, until these have made him so ; as 
they have been the making of many an orator, gene- 
ral, and statesman ; besides multitudes of artisans 
of an inferior character, as in mathematics, poetry, 
music, and medicine, which this seminary of uni- 
versal knowledge has bred. I am very sensible, 
said I, of the truth of all this ; you know I am ; 
and well pleased that you have fallen upon so sea- 
sonable a subject of discourse, my cousin being 
ambitious of a right notion of that hypothesis which 
the old academics and peripatetics you speak of, 
propagated about moral ends. And in regard Sta- 
seas the Neapolitan was your companion for many 
years together, and for several months last past 
you have laid it out for your business, as we know 
very well, by the help of Antiochus here at Athens, 
to make yourself master of the whole hypothesis ; 
who so fit to explain it as yourself? At which 
smiling, Well, said he, I find then I am to run the 
first heat, and since it must be so, I will give the 
young gentleman as good a light into the matter <as 
I can, the silence and commodiousness of this re- 
tirement inviting me to do what never an oracle 
in the world could hare persuaded me I ever 
should, and that is, to exercise the function of a 
philosophy-lecturer in the academy. This query 
first however ; in endeavouring to be serviceable 



BOOK THE FIFTH. 245 

to one of you, shall I not be troublesome to the 
rest ? Yes, to me, no doubt, said I, that have been 
requesting the favour ! at the same time Pompo- 
nius and my brother Quintus entreated, they might 
be so happy as to hear him ; whereupon Piso be- 
gan. Now, Brutus, you are a judge of his exposi- 
tion of Antiochus's notions, whether it was right 
or not, because you have received ample instruc- 
tions from his brother Aristus. Besides, or I am 
under a mistake, yoir are an admirer of his princi- 
ples : let me pray you therefore to take good no- 
tice of what Piso told us to the following effect, 
I have already specified, said he, the peculiar ex- 
cellences, and the advantageous ceconomy of the 
perlpatetical scheme. The whole of it, as of all 
the other hypotheses, lies distributed into three 
parts: the first, physics; the second, logic; and 
the third, morality. So narrowly have these phi- 
losophers inspected the fabric and constitution of 
the universe that perhaps there is never a region 
or extent, never a combination of particles in hea- 
ven, earth, or ocean, to speak poetically, but their 
disquisitions have reached it. In the first place 
they took under consideration the origin and ele- 
ments of the world, and came to resolutions con- 
cerning them, not merely plausible and specious, 
but mathematical and demonstrative. They laid 
together all such assertions or effata as appeared 
to have the greatest evidence, and upon the suffi- 
ciency of that stock they still traded on to the 



246 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

more occult and remote dispositions and affections 
of nature. Aristotle has described and accounted 
for the generation, nutrition, and organical struc- 
ture of all kinds of animals. Theophrastus lias 
done as much for plants and vegetables of every \ 
species. By the help of these collections the h?d- 
den forms and properties of things are discovered 
more easily. The same instructors have left a 
body of directions both for logic and rhetoric ; 
and Aristotle, their generalissimo, brought into 
play the method of maintaining both sides of the 
question, to the end that whatever can be said 
pro or con upon every argument may have its fulL 
force ; and not in order to contradict and over- 
throw whatever shall be alleged, as Arcesilas pro- 
posed. In managing the Jthird part of philosophy 
relating to the conduct of life, they concerned 
themselves with more than the condition of private 
persons, and prescribed for the modelling and re- 
gulation of a body politic. To Aristotle are we 
debtors for the descriptions he has- transmitted of 
the manners, customs, and constitutions, as well 
of the barbarous nations as of Greece ; and to 
Theophrastus for that knowledge which is come to 
us, of their laws. Both have likewise offered their 
sentiments and directions about the forms of pub- 
lic government, and the qualifications of the go- 
vernors, and have shewn at laro'e wherein consists 
the perfection of political establishment; Theo- 
phrastus has favoured us over and above with his 



BOOK THE TIFTH. 247 

observations and maxims about public revolutions, 
nice junctures, and the critical seasons for rigor 
and indulgence. A retired, contemplative, and 
studious life they apprehended to be the best, and 
that it most becomes a man of wisdom, as being 
of the same kind with the life of the deities. Up- 
on all these they have treated gracefully and majes- 
tically. With regard to the summum bonum they 
have delivered themselves in two different styles 
and methods, and one suited to vulgar capacities, 
and this they call l^coripixov ; (proper for the use 
of those that are strangers to learning and philo- 
sophy) the other, that which is to be found in their 
commentaries or dissertations ; correct and elabo- 
rate. Not that there is any thing material wherein 
they vary or disagree, though seemingly they may 
teach us inconsistent lessons. As for instance, 
when they are enquiring into, and stating the con- 
ditions of a happy life, the grand purpose, I confess, 
and the dernier resort of all philosophy, they are 
sometimes unresolved upon the question, whether 
a wise man may command it if he pleases, or whe- 
ther adverse accidents may ruffle and mar it ; some 
are for this, and some for that. Theophrastus in 
his treatise of a happy life makes large concessions, 
and screws up the power of fortune too high : for 
if he has truth on his side, then is it really more 
than wisdom can do to make us happy : and indeed 
his account of things is so enervating and unmanly, 
that it derogates not a little from the authority 



$48 CICERO OF MORAL END** 

and pretensions of virtue. Wherefore it will be 
advisable for us to keep close to Aristotle and his 
son Nichomachus, I mean the books of moral 
philosophy which bear his name, though we are 
told that Aristotle penned them ; as if it had been 
impossible for the son to come up so near to the 
excellences of the father. And yet there will be 
no harm in it, if we sometimes call Theophrastu* 
to our assistance, provided we do not underrate 
the strength and forces of virtue as he has done. 
To these professors let us confine ourselves, it 
having been the misfortune of their successors, that 
notwithstanding in their own way they have an- 
swered their character much beyond the descen- 
dants of the other schools, yet they slid into such 
a degeneracy, that one would almost take them for 
another sect, by themselves, and from themselves. 
Strato, Theophrastus's pupil and immediate suc- 
cessor addicted himself wholly to natural philoso- 
phy, and succeeded in it very well ; but new and 
singular were all the notions he started, and hardly 
any of them had a relation to moral subjects. 
Lysias was the scholar of Strato, a man of a large 
compass of expression, but his matter mean and 
steril. Aristo, his disciple, excelled in politeness 
and elegance, but wanted the main perfection, 
seriousnes and solidity of reasoning. He has wrote 
many volumes very neatly and handsomely ; it were 
to be wished his performances carried in them a , 
greater sway and cogency. Many others I might 



BOOK THE FIFTH, 349 

mention, as particularly the learned and eloquent 
Hieronvmus, though in regard indolence is his 
summum bonum, it is somewhat absurd to make a 
peripatetic of him ; for a different summum bonum 
ever implies a different philosophy. Critolaus's 
arguing is almost as ponderous <md commanding as 
that of the ancients whom he proposed to imitate; 
and this must be said for him, he no where departs 
from the good old way ; but then he surfeits you 
with a superfluity and luxuriancy of words. Dio- 
dorus, a pupil of his, tacks virtue and indolence 
together, and so is as singular in his summum ho- 
num t and as distinct from the peripatetics as 
Hieronymus. But as for the doctrine of the ancients, 
my friend Antiochus has been at the pains to repre- 
sent it fairly in all its parts, and proves that it was the 
same with that which Aristotle and Polemo have since 
asserted. Nor has Lucius unadvisedly picked out 
the question of summum bonum at this time to be 
read upon, seeing, when we have once determined 
that, we have as good as passed a judgment upon 
all the rest. Matters less considerable may per- 
chance be overlooked, or not thoroughly under- 
stood, and then the ill consequences of our care- 
lessness or ignorance can but bear proportion at 
most to the value or importance of the advantage 
neglected : whereas, until we are duly informed 
of the nature of the summum bonum, we must live 
in the dark, and manage at all ventures ; float upon 
the wide ocean without fear or wit, without appre- 

2 K 



tSO CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

hending where we are, or what port we are to 
steer for. But when the ultimate ends of good 
and evil are made out, we know what course to 
take, and what duties we have to discharge ; for 
there must be some end or other which our inten- 
tions or actions are aimed at, and this ought to be 
the land-mark in our pursuit after the measures and 
means of making ourselves happy ; but what this is 
at last has been the subject of many a notable dis- 
pute. I conceive it our best way to take that method 
which proceeds upon the division of Carneades, 
and is current with Antiochus. Now Carneades, 
besides the several conclusions which the philoso- 
phers had come to before him about summum 
bonum, considered and comprehended how many 
notions it is possible to frame of it. No science 
or art, said he, has properly the occasion and de- 
sign of itself within itself; these are things distinct 
and peculiar. It were needless and tiresome to 
run out into instances. Nothing can be clearer 
than that art consisting of no more than its own 
rules and methods is one thing ; the end and pur- 
pose of art another. Medicine is the art of pre- 
serving health and restoring it : the directing the 
motions of a ship is the art of navigation; and 
wisdom or prudence is the art of living : why then 
should not this art have a final cause dependent 
upon something out of itself as well as any of 
the other ? That prudence affects only and alto- 
gether what she finds consonant and analogous to 



BOOK THE FIFTH. 251 

the measures of nature, and essentially sufficient 
to excite and engage the ogjuu^ as the Greeks term 
it, ox appetite of the soul, is most generally presup- 
posed. The only question is, what thus excites 
and engages by virtue of itself, and emerges the 
first object of our inclinations ? And this is the 
great bone of dissension among the philosophers, 
in their searches after the summum bomim : for 
the dispute about moral ends and the nature of 
the final and ultimate good hangs and turns upon 
the prima invit amenta naturce, whatever in nature 
first challenges our inclinations ; for when we have 
made a discovery of this, it will be a key to us, and 
the whole length of the disquisition about summum 
bonum and its contrary lies open and plain. With 
some people it is a clear case, that pleasure is the 
thing we catch at from the beginning; and pain 
that which we first avoid, and endeavour to divert ; 
with others, that indolence is our darling, and pain 
a nuisance as soon as we are born : others a^ain 
are pleased to prefer what they call the prima se- 
cundum naturam, the first general provisions and 
privileges of nature, such as sound, entire limbs 
and organs, neither more nor fewer than a man 
ought to have, health, ease, strength, comeliness, 
and so forth ; answerable to which the mind has 
also her first general provisions, and privileges, 
and the kindlings, and foetus, as it were, of virtue, 
Under one or other of these three titles must come 
Whatever affects us, either in order to our obtaining 



252 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

or escaping it, for it is impossible that the r e should 
be any fourth, and therefore the whole concern and 
obligation of pursuing this, and eschewing that, is 
to be accounted to, and stated by one or other of 
these three ; whence it follows that prudence or the 
art of living, must have one of these three to lay 
hold on for a handle, and for matter to work upon; 
and when it appears which of them it is that admi- 
nisters the first solicitations or impressions, we can- 
not well miss of a right conception of virtue and 
honesty. For in conformity to one of these three 
generals the essence of virtue will lie, either in 
practicing upon a principle and prospect of plea" 
sure, though it should be unsuccessfully ; or of 
indolence, though as unsuccessfully; or of securing 
to ourselves the first general privileges of nature: 
Observe by the way, that as manifold as the prin- 
ciples in nature are supposed to be, so many and 
so various are the accounts of moral ends. There 
is another sort of people, who take all these prin- 
ciples together, and assign for the scope of duty, 
pleasure, indolence, and the first general privileges 
of' nature, in common, and at large. By tin's time 
I have reckoned up six several opinions concerning 
the summum bonum. The first of the three last, 
that of pleasure was Aristippus's; the second that 
of indolence, hieronymus's ; and the third that of 
being furnished with the first general provisions 
and privileges of nature, came from Carneades ; 
for though he did not establish it in good earnest 



JBOOK THE FIFTH. 253 

as his own, yet by way of argumentation and ex- 
ercise he undertook to defend it. These three 
hypotheses have taken their chance; the last of 
them has been eagerly and warmly supported. 
Indeed it is not to be imagined, how the intent and 
resolution of practising upon a pursuit of pleasure, 
and that without certainty of success, can imply so 
much of virtue, or of any thing simply and solely 
good, as that upon the consideration of its being 
such, we should drive at pleasure as the end of all 
our actions. As nobody ever yet imagined, that 
the escaping of pain and inconvenience, even when 
we have the refusal of it, is a thing simply advan- 
tageous, but only so upon the comparison. This 
we cannot say with regard to the principle of tak- 
ing those measures, which may best put or keep us 
in possession of what is agreeable to nature. In 
the judgment of the stoics there can be no other 
principle of virtue, no other notion of good simply 
and for itself desirable, but this. The six uncom- 
plex acceptations of summum boifnm I have now 
laid before you : of which, two had the ill luck to 
be thrown up and come to nothing, but the other 
four have stood their ground. There are, besides, 
three several compound or blended notions of 
summum barium, three and no more, as, if you 
seai en to the bottom of the matter, you will per- 
ceive there cannot be ; because it is neaessary 
eitiier thatpleasure should be coupled vhhrirtue, 
according to the project of Callipho and Dinoma- 



254 cicero of moral ends* 

chus ; or else indolence, as Diodorus would have 
it ; or the prima nature, the jifst general provisions 
and privileges of nature, as the ancients, or the 
old academics and the peripatetics conceived. It 
is not to be expected I should enlarge upon all 
these now ; thus much however I may spare time 
to advertise, that the principle of pleasure merits 
not so much as the favour of connivence, the ends, 
for which our being was given us, being abundantly 
more honourable and exalted; whereof more anon. 
Indolence has the same objections in a manner, 
lying against it, as pleasure. You have seen al- 
ready, Brutus, what was insisted upon by Torqua- 
tus and me, as to the hypothesis of pleasure ; and 
upon that of virtue, considered as the sole good of 
man, how I managed the dispute with Cato; so 
that I need only suggest as before, thafc almost all 
the same arguments which bear hard against plea- 
sure, will do the doctrine of indolence a lilie disser- 
vice. As little occasion is there that we should 
east about for any other to confute Carneades. Fix 
upon what you will for a summum bonum, if virtue 
has no part in it, it will be inconsistent with all 
obligations of duty, conscience, and friendship. 
Again ; if you graft virtue either upon pleasure or 
indolence, the specific excellency of it will turn into 
venom* What can be a readier way to overcast, 
to sully and tarnish the brightness of virtue than 
to assign it a joint influence over us in our coun- 
sels and actions, either with a principle according 



BOOK THE FIFTH, 255 

to which a man is as happy as he can be, if he is 
not under the sense of any present evil, or else 
with another which is wholly concerned for the 
gratification of the capricious and despicable part 
of us ? The masters of the porch are still in the 
way, and these have plumed themselves from the 
peripatetics and academics, that is, they have taken 
their sense of things to themselves, and imposed 
new 7 terms of their own devising. Were we to 
take all these to task in their order, we should find 
our account in it. But the stoics challenge the 
opportunity before us, and the rest of them shall 
hear from us at a more convenient season. Take 
notice, if you please, that Democritus's sw&u/x/a, 
or state cf inward serenity and good assurance^ 
cannot enter into the substance of the debate pro- 
posed, it being not demanded wherein the happiness 
of life cojisists, but out of what it results: now 
Democritus's inward satisfaction and complacency 
is neither more nor less than happiness of life itself. 
Neither are the conceits of Pyrrho, Aristo, and 
Herillus, to be fetched into the compass of our 
disquisition as now limited ; so that had they not 
lost all credit and regard, they would be foreign to 
our subject and design. If we will make out any 
thing upon the question in hand, concerning the 
final causes and last consequences of good and evil, 
we must turn to what has been taken notice of al- 
ready, to that, whatever it be, which is agreeable 
to nature, and primarily and simply to be desired. 



256 CICERO OP- MORAL ENDS, 

Now this were pure nonsense and folly, if every 
thing whose essence is not wholly made up either 
of moral goodness or turpitude, had not in it that, 
upon the score of which it is more than merely in- 
different and insignificant ; and all tilings that come 
under this denomination are every one as good and 
as bad as another, which is what Pyrrho and Aristo 
suppose ; and as for Herillus, by resolving the 
whole of our good into knowledge or science, he 
has removed the obligations of duty out of sight, 
and absolutely vacated the expediency of admoni- 
tion and deliberation. Upon the whole; since we 
can shew no favour to ever a one of all the other 
hypotheses, and it is impossible any beside should 
arise, that of the ancients will have its course, and 
carry its point in spite of fate. This is it which 
the stoics are pleased to make so free with; and 
with this we shall now begin to wade into the main 
enquiry. Every living creature is possessed by a 
love of itself, and is no sooner such than busy 
about its own conservation. This zeal and solici- 
tousness for its own safety and well-being is im- 
planted in it, for that it may be the guardian of 
itself, disposed and in a condition to take those 
impressions and measures which nature recom- 
mends. - Now this fundamental principle of self- 
preservation is at the first implicit, confused, and 
undistinguished, and it is more than the subject 
of it comprehends, what is the nature either of 
itself, or of that very propensity, or the force of its 



BOOK THE FIFTH. 257 

own powers ; until it gets ground, and begins to enter- 
tain some imaginations and suspicions of things, how 
far this and that and the other hath any relation to it, 
or ca:> have any effect or influence upon it, and so, 
by little and little, it picks up a consciousness and 
knowledge of its own compositum. And then the 
next thing it sets about is to make prize of those 
circumstances which are found agreeable to nature, 
and to give the contrary a diversion ; and for this 
very purpose the instinct and prejudice aforesaid 
was originally wrought into the soul. The conse- 
quence is, that every animal's proper object of 
desire must be that in kind which accords to the 
measures of nature. And so its final good appears 
to be this, that it should live according to nature, 
and stand rightly disposed for taking her Bent and 
for closing with her counsels. To go on ; every 
animal has its own species and properties, and its 
final cause is to be commensurate to the capacity 
of its nature. It is true, they all concur in the 
more general essentials, and as men and brutes 
hold many qualities in common, so do the brutes 
of one predicament with those of another. Never- 
theless every species vindicates its distinguishing 
and char act eristical properties, which are tnose we 
are now concerned for, peculiar, and accommodated 
to the purposes and tendencies of its own nature. 
Let it therefore be observed, that while we make it 
the end of every animal's existence that it should 
live according to nature, we neither say nor mean 

2 L 



258 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

that all animals whatsoever have the very same end 
of existence. No art can be without some princi- 
ples of science ; and so far all arts are equally under 
a common necessity ; and yet every art has its 
principles of science proper to itself. Thus all 
animals are alike concerned to live according 
to nature, as different and dissimular as their 
natures are from one another; (for the purpose, 
a horse's, an oxe's, a man's) because all of 
them have their common qualities and affections 
wherein they agree. Nor is this only true as to 
animals. Every sort and order of things in the 
world that subsist in the way of nutrition, growth, 
and increase, as we see of the product and fruits of 
the earth, pursue their own process of preserving 
life, acquiring substance, and attaining the respec- 
tive ends of their being. In a word, we may apply 
the same observation to all the parts of the universe, 
and I will be bold to stand by this assertion, that 
every kind of thing is studious of its own safety, 
and strives, as after its ultimate end, to fix and en- 
sure itself in the very best condition its nature 
admits of. And therefore though all things that 
have a place in the universe do not exist unto one 
and the same end, yet the ends to which they stand 
directed, have a near affinity and likeness. And 
thus is it fairly proved that living according to na- 
ture is the chief and ultimate good of man, that is 
to say, living so, as to make the most of our nature, 
and to leave no defects in it, What I have hitherto 



BOOK THE FIFTH. 959 

suggested I shall make somewhat clearer yet, be- 
speaking your favour, if I overact my part. Rea- 
sonable allowances are to be made for my young 
scholar ; who stands fairly excused, considering his 
age, though he should never have known any thing 
until now of what I have told him. You say well; 
said I, let me add only this, that there is no part 
of your discourse but what young and old too may 
find their advantage in. Having shewn, continued 
he, the standard whereby we are to judge of the 
desirableness of any thing, we must now set forth 
and confirm the reasons upon which this rule of 
valuation is grounded. And that we may do this 
effectually, we will return to the position which 
lies at the bottom of all, not only in our method, 
but in the order of nature too, namely, that every 
animated being loves itself. This, it is certain, is a 
principle struck deep, and every sensitive creature 
is so necessarily conscious of it, that the man would 
be hissed out of all conversation who should venture 
to deny it. However, that the least want of evi- 
dence may not be pretended, I am willing to de- 
scend to a more curious demonstration of the truth 
of it. Let us take for granted then, though I know 7 
not how we can in modesty so much as put the 
case, that some one animal is to be found in the 
world which bears a mortal hatred against itself. 
That which follows from the supposal is a direct 
and immediate contradiction ; as thus : in com- 
pliance to that inclination or impulse by which it 



ft60 CieERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

is prompted to commit hostilities upon itself, it will 
earnestly endeavour to give itself the satisfaction of 
compassing that which will be prejudicial and inju- 
rious to it. Now this it will do to indulge and 
gratify itself; and so in the very same aet it will 
both hate and love itself, which is impracticable 
and impossible. Before any man can truly become 
his own enemy, he must learn to turn good into 
evil, and evil into good ; avoid what he has all the 
reason in the world to pursue, and pursue what he 
has all the reason in the world to avoid. And if 
he can do that, it is to no purpose to make more 
words about life or the ends of it. But how then 
are we to account for the practice of self-murder^ 
for one fellow's hanging himself, another's drowning 
himself, &c. for that resolution of the old man in 
Terence, to make his own life miserable in remem- 
brance of his child, and by way of tribute to him? 
Alas ! these are not designedly and properly their 
own enemies. For what if it is the unhappiness of 
some people that they give way too much to their 
grief, of others that they cannot moderate their 
passions, either of desire or anger, and so leap in- 
to ruin and destruction wilh a hearty good will? 
They are verily persuaded all the while that they 
cannot do themselves a greater piece of service 
They have this to say, and with very good pretence, 
as they conceive, mvki sic usus est, fyc. it is my 
pleasure so to do ; I leave you to yours ; pray leave 
me to mine. Else, when they had resolved upon 



BOOK THE FIFTH. 2^1 

a heart-breaking, and were night and day carry- 
ing on the comfortable work of maceration, the 
malecontents would never charge themselves, as 
they do, with mismanagement, and confess, in the 
very practice, that some time or other, in some 
respect or other, they have brought mischief and 
inconveniences upon themselves; for by such a 
complaint they make it appear, that they mean 
well, after all, to their own persons. And there- 
fore when we say at any time, such a man has 
done himself a diskindness, that he is his own foe, 
and stands in his ozvn way, and life is such a bur- 
then to him that he cannot endure it, the very 
supposition implies, that the person is possessed 
with an antecedent concern for and regard to him- 
self. But this is not the whole truth yet : for 
beside that nobody entertains an hatred against 
himself, every body, as it must be acknowledged, 
is solicitous to have his condition and circum- 
stances sit right and easy upon him. For if it 
should be all one to us, whether matters go well 
or ilj with us, (as m things of an indifferent and 
trivial nature we are neuters and careless) then 
must the soul be utterly incapable of any act 
of desire. Again; to imagine that this principle 
of love does not terminate in a man's own person, 
but in something else, were absurd t, the higl 
degree. It is true, when we coaie to talk of its 
efficacy with relation to friendship, good offices, 
and the e-er se of particular virtues, it maybe 
said in one se*,se to do so, but then the meaning is 



262 CICERO Of MORAL ENDS. 

obvious and well known, and hinders not at all, 
but I hat when we consider it with respect to our 
own persons, it should centre in them. Thus, for 
example, we love not ourselves for the sake of any 
pleasure ; no, we love that for the sake of ourselves. 
But to what purpose all this? Is it not certain 
that we love, and which is more, that we passion- 
ately love ourselves ? Where is the man, or, at 
least, how great a rarity, who keeps his colour and 
an even pulse when death surprises him ? not but 
it is a very culpable weakness, when our time is 
come, to be scared out of our wits. The same 
remark and rule hold proportionably as to grief or 
pain. Though it is enough for my purpose, if, by 
these apprehensions in us, it plainly appears, as it 
does, that human nature cannot be reconciled to 
its own dissolution. And if some people let the 
dread of it run away with their discretion ; from 
hence we may the more strongly conclude, that 
these excessive fears would never appear in some 
people, unless nature allowed them in a moderate 
degree. Nor are those persons the only instances 
of this aversion who fling away from death, either 
because it carries them from the enjoyments of 
life, or because they have reason to fear they shall 
fare amiss in a future state, or because of the con- 
flict and agonies under which they shall probably 
labour at the time of expiring. Infants, we see, 
before they have conceived the least suspicions of 
any such ill consequences, are presently under a 



BOOK THE FIFTH. 26S 

consternation if we tell them, with a design to scare 
them, that a bitllbcggar is a coming. The brute- 
beasts themselves 

unfurnish'd with a force of sense 



And policy, to plot their own defence, 

(Pacuvius is my author) even these have no sooner 
death in view but they are struck with amazement 
and horror. Nay further; cannot the presence of 
it discompose a man of wisdom? Nobody will 
have the confidence to say so. It must run against 
the grain to take his last leave of his friends and 
the world. Though the vigour and vehemence of 
this principle never shews itself more to advantage 
than when indigent people are ready, as thousands 
have been, to suffer any thing rather than die to 
rights; and old decrepit creatures are dragged off 
so sorely against their will, desiring with Philocte- 
tes to protract a miserable life rather than not live 
at all, as he made out a subsistence upon the birds 
which he shot. So Atticus tells us, conjigebat tar- 
dus celeres, §c. 

The shafts he sent retnrn'd well-fledg'd with prej 
To their disabled owner as he lay ; 
The plumes his mantle made — » — 

We have traced the principle down from rational 
to irrational animals, and, whether the vegetative 
world came fortuitously by it, or, as the men of the 
best learning and understanding allege, the sove- 



%64< CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

reign cause cf the universe entailed it upon the 
kind, we may follow it into our very orchards and 
gardens. It is wonderful to observe how every 
vegetable keeps itself sound and fixed ; either by 
the munition of its hark, or the distribution of its 
root ; as animals are fyeld to their being and their 
kind, by a right disposition of their organs and the 
continuity of their parts. There are, who assert 
nature as the sole ordering of all these things, and 
I subscribe to their opinion ; but yet if others will 
have different sentiments I cannot help it; they 
must enjoy their own constructions ; only let them 
know, if they please, that by human nature I mean 
nothing else but man. They are both one and the 
same ; and until a man has got a way of disperson- 
ating himself, he cannot avoid hankering after those 
things which will turn to advantage and good ac- 
count. And therefore it was not inconsiderably 
done of all the greatest philosophers, to choose for 
the starting-place of their inquiries about summum 
bonum, the first affections and principles of nature; 
for they presumed that whatever beings feel them- 
selves inwardly solicited to love themselves, are 
under the power of an ingenerated principle oblig- 
ing thern to pursue whatever is accommodated and 
agreeable to their natures. This therefore being 
evinced, that every man has naturally a near affec- 
tion for himself, in the next place we are to settle 
our notions about the nature of man, for the. whole 
controversy will turn upon that. Man, it is nOto- 



BOOK THE FIFTH. %65 

rious, consists of body and mind ; the last is 
the superior half of him ; the first the inferior. 
The structure of his body is very remarkable ; 
and how far it excels that of other living crea- 
tures, as well as the noble oeconomy of his soul, 
attended with all the sensitive faculties, and 
constituted of those intellectual powers which pre- 
side in his composition, being the stupendious 
instrument and source of his counsels, his reason, 
his knowledge, and his virtues ; for the parts and 
functions of his body lie a great deal more open 
and obnoxious to discovery than the nature of his 
soul, and are by a long disproportion less eminent 
and valuable. To begin nevertheless with these ; 
it is universally known into what an exact regula- 
rity the parts, proportions, the shape, and stature 
of the body are wrought and adjusted. No one 
can be ignorant of the situation, and external form 
of the forehead, eyes, ears, &c. that are proper to 
an human body. It is moreover well enough un- 
derstood how much it imports us, their being in a 
good condition, and duly disposed to exercise their 
respective offices ; and that none of themJbe dis- 
tempered or damaged. Nature desires it, and 
there is a certain tout or co-optration of the parts 
of the body wherein all such motions and conditions 
of them conspire as agree best to nature : insomuch 
that if they suffer any distortion or injury, or are 
twisted into any aukward or untoward motion or 
posture; as when a man is for walking upon all 

2 M 



%66 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

four, or backward instead of forward, it looks as 
if he had a mind to run away from himself, and 
throw off his nature in a pique. And therefore it is 
not at all strange that the ways which posture-mas- 
ters, buffoo-:s and libertines have of bestowing their 
limbs, their wriglings, and their broken motions, 
should seem a force upon nature. The depravity 
gets to a head in the soul first, and afterwards to 
complete the metamorphosis, it disjoints the body. 
And it is therefore much less a wonder that orderly 
and graceful actions and gestures appear so na- 
tural. To go on ; the bare existence of the mind 
ought by no means to content us ; the perfections 
of it we are not to leave out or neglect, but care 
must be taken that its faculties be no way impaired 
or unaccomplished in any of those virtues which 
they are capable of attaining. Each external sense 
has its proper capacity, by virtue of which it exerts 
itself effectually, and very readily and nimbly catches 
the ideal communications of sensible objects. The 
powers or virtues of the soul, or rather of the ex- 
celling and transcendent half, that is, of the mind 
properly so called, though not a few, stand redu- 
cible to these two kinds, those that are inbred or 
innate, and known by the name of involuntary ; 
and those out of which it derives an accessional 
lustre of merit, and these are called voluntary or 
acquired. Of the former sort are docility or apt- 
ness of understanding, memory, and in a word, all 
that goes to the making up an ingenious man, or a 
man of parts, and is called sagacity, and reach or 



BOOK THE FIFTH, 26*7 

richness of sense. But the latter sort is of the true 
and sublimest virtues, prudence, temperance, for- 
titude, justice, and the rest of them. This sum- 
mary account of the mind and body it was neces- 
sary to set before you that we may come the better 
to understand what are the occasions of nature, and 
what she expects from us. Now it is evident in 
the result, that we could not possibly love ourselves, 
nor so heartily wish and solicit the perfection of 
all the parts and powers of our minds and bodies, 
did they not challenge our favour and affection 
upon their own. account, and carry in them almost 
all that is fundamental to a happy life, because as 
he, that makes the preservation of himself his bu- 
siness, cannot but stand well-affected to every part 
of himself, so the greater the perfection is, and the 
more meritorious and improved the sigmficancy of 
any part, the more of our esteem and love it com- 
mands, that perfection of life to which we aspire 
being all one with a complete collection of virtues 
and excellencies intellectual and bodily. And this 
is the complement of summum bonum, in other 
words, of that jinal human good which has no 
other good lying out of it. Now then, we see, and 
very clearly too, that forasmuch as every man is a 
lover of himself, immediately and for his own 
proper sake, he can do no less than be kind to 
whatever bears a part in the essence of his body 
or his soul, or is instrumental and serviceable 
in any action or disposition of either, and that for 



268 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

the proper sakes of the several s. A direct and obvi- 
ous consequence of all which is this, that the greater 
the worth and excellency is of any parts or proper- 
ties that belong to our being, the larger is the share 
they are entitled to of our love and esteem. And 
so the more this or that is to be valued of those 
constituent parts, which are singly to be valued 
upon their own accounts, the higher ought itsjorce 
or virtue to be rated. Thus, for instance, the 
virtues of the mind take place of the abilities of 
the body, and the voluntary virtues, of the involun- 
tary. Indeed properly we ought not to give the 
title of virtues to any other but the voluntary ', to 
which as being the effects of reason, the most ex- 
alted of our faculties, the involuntary are not com- 
parable. The summum bonum of all those unin- 
telligent movers which, among her other species, 
nature provides and has in charge, is restrained to 
the body. It is shrewdly and plausibly supposed by 
the virtuosi, that the soul or mechanical principle of 
7notion in a hog is constituted of saline particles or a- 
eids to preserve itfromputrifying. Not but in some 
kinds of brutes, as lions, dogs, horses, we discover 
a resemblance or imitation of this or that virtue. 
And the case stands otherwise with any of these 
than with a hog, because beside the ordinary mo- 
tion of their bodies one would almost conclude from 
their behavior sometimes that they had rational 
souls to set them at work. The soul of man is 
consummate in his rational faculties; as virtue, 



J500K THE FIFTH. %6$ 

which owes itself to them, and affords the philoso- 
pher so much matter to work upon, is the consum- 
mation of those faculties. Again ; the several 
classes of vegetables resemble animals, in their pro- 
ficiency and perfection. Thus, for example, we 
say of a vine, that it lives or is dying, and so of 
any tree, that it is young or old, in a thriving or 
decaying condition. We take the same methods 
with them as we do with animals ; 'what their con- 
stitutions require and relish, we administer, and 
separate what is noxious. It is one part of the 
business of agriculture to breed them, and keep 
them alive and flourishing, to make incisions, to 
prune, to raise, carry up, and fix the branches 
upon stock; in a word, so propitiously to assist 
and encourage nature in her course as that the 
vine itself, had it a voice, would return thanks for 
the dressing and care bestowed on it. Now the 
means of this tuition and cultivation of the vine, 
(to keep to that instance) are external, it being 
unable, if left destitute of all succour and tendence 
from Without, by itself to work on its own perfec- 
tion. Furthermore ; suppose this vine should 
come to have sense, and appetite, and spontaneous 
motion ; how, most probably, would it manage 
matters then? Over and above continuing and 
promoting those advantages which it formerly re- 
ceived from the hand of him who dressed it, would 
it not befriend and guard its accessional senses, 
appetites, and members too, supposing it had any? 



270 ©ICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

And if its care will be thus extended beyond the 
substance and properties which it has had all along 
to those which afterwards came into it ; its Jinal 
cause will not continue the same as when the gar- 
diner looked after it ; for it will now endeavour to 
be as just as it can to its nature with all its new 
additions and improvements about it. And so its 
last Jinal cause is analogous to the first, but yet not 
the same : the summum bonum of a vegetable is 
quitted, and now it is concerned for that of an 
animal. Once more ; let rationality be superin- 
duced upon sensation ; will it no longer make 
provision for the parts and powers which it had 
before ? Yes : but yet will it not chiefly favour 
and consult for the interests of the last addition? 
Will it not be most wedded to those properties and 
affections of the soul which are ihe worthiest and 
the best ? And these being the intellectual, must 
not the complement of its summum bonum be their 
perfection ? Thus then rises the ascent or scale of 
advantages, as traced from beings of a more 
general character to such as have an interest in 
that summum bonum which is made out of the best 
condition and circumstances that the body can 
desire, together with the consummation of the 
rational or intelligent faculties. And this being 
the state of the case, I cannot have erred in what 
I further off intimated before, that, could every 
man be acquainted with himself, and frame a right 
estimate of the value and significancy of his nature 



BOOK THE FIFTH. 271 

and of every part of it, as soon as he is born, that 
consummate and supreme good of his which we 
are now enquiring for, could not possihly escape 
his knowledge even then, and consequently he could 
never be overseen or misled. But alas ! the mis- 
fortune is, our constitution lies out of the way, and 
is not to be understood until a great many years of 
ignorance are gone over our heads, and we come 
by a slow and insensible progress a little better to 
apprehend ourselves. By an original instinct, and 
before we can give an account of it, we are recom- 
mended and endeared to our own persons ; and 
forced upon self-defence and protection by the 
elasticity of that principle of self-love which is 
begot and born with us. And afterwards when we 
can look deeper in\o ourselves, we find out our 
own beings, and wherein we and other animals are 
unallied, and thence-forward, perhaps, we try to 
make up to the proper end of our existence. Thus 
it is also with brutes ; for some time together they 
are fastened to the very place where they drew 
their first breath, and ere long they set forward to 
seek their fortunes as their inclinations carry them : 
the young snakes crawl away; the ducklings pad- 
dle; the blackbirds leave the nest; the calves 
butt and run atilt ; and the scorpions play their 
stings; each in tne way of their respective natures. 
So for human kind ; infants we see, when once 
within the threshold of life, lie still as contentedly 
as if their souls were to come after them ; till they 



272 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

have gathered a little strength and courage, and 
then the first experiment they make with their souls 
and senses, is, to get upon their legs, and do feats 
with their hands, and take knowledge of their 
nurses ; by and by there is nothing to be done 
without their play-fellows, and no quiet but when 
the knot of sportsmen is met, and business going 
forward ; little romances must be told them ; and 
when they have any thing to spare, their favourites 
partake of their bounty ; nothing shall pass in the 
family, but they will be making their enquiries and 
observations ; and so they go on to form and 
compose their own notions, and treasure up other 
people's ; nobody can come in their way, but they 
will be asking his name"; when they outwit or get 
the better of their companions, they exult and tri- 
umph ; and when they come by the worst on it, 
they are dejected and mortified : the cause and 
reason of all which may be very easily assigned. 
There is wrought into our nature an aptitude ad- 
monishing us to acquire good habits and improve- 
ments ; and children before they have laid any 
foundation of learning, while there is no more 
virtue in them than the seminal miniature, are for 
the essaying at the imitation of it. Things are 
so ordered and contrived within us, that of course 
we are led on to action and offices of benevolence, 
liberality, and gratitude, and our souls are quali- 
fied for and disposed to the earning of knowledge, 
and the exercises of prudence, and fortitude ; and 



BOOK THE FIFTH. 273 

their contraries are a nuisance ; no wonder then 
that, when little, we should strike out these first 
glimmerings and sparklings of virtue, which at long- 
run kindle up philosophy into a luminary that con- 
ducts us, as commissioned from God, till it brings 
us to the ultimate good of human nature: the 
prevalency of the pi^inciple aforesaid, as I have al- 
ready often observed, betraying itself in the state 
of the soul's infancy and impotence. At length, 
when it has attained maturity and vigour, it com- 
prehends the full force and significancy of human 
nature, that is, it first of all acquaints itself with 
its own domestic affairs, not but it may, if it pleases, 
examine and learn what lies beyond. And therefore 
if we design to know what we are, we must retire 
into nature, consult seriously her occasions, and 
embrace her directions. This advice was too re- 
markable and weighty to come from a mere mortal, 
and therefore it is ascribed to a deity, it being no 
less than the oracular instruction of Apollo Pythius, 
that we should hexvare of not knowing ourselves ,* 
which is as much as to say, that we should not be 
ignorant of the nature and powers of the body and 
the mind, and that we should propose to ourselves 
that condition of life which takes in the largest 
circuit of advantages. Now it being proved, that 
there is in the mind of man an inbred and original 
inclination to the perfection of condition and pleni- 
tude of circumstances above-mentioned, it is very 
certain that nature can have no after-game, when 

2 N 



274 CICERO OV MORAL ENDS. 

once we are in possession of the objects desired, 
and so the summum bonum must be an aggregate 
of those things which we are inclined to desire and 
affect upon their own proper account, unless, after 
all, we have not yet demonstrated that every par- 
ticular included in that aggregate, is by itself, and 
for itself, a desirable good. Perhaps it may look 
like an omission, my not bestowing pleasure among 
those goods of the body I have lately mentioned. 
If it does, I shall take some other time to give my 
reasons. For in the present inquiry it makes no 
difference, whether pleasure be any of those things 
which are primarily desirable in the account of 
nature, or not. If it has nothing to do among 
them, and for my own part I think it none of the 
number, it is well I have not made it so. If it has, 
and the other opinion is better grounded, it can 
give no disturbance to our idea of the summum 
bonum. Let pleasure immediately take its place 
among our prima natural, our first general advan- 
tages and desirables, and all that can be said, is, 
that the body is capable of another good which we 
did not think of. What does our definition of 
the summum bonum get or lose by this ? Hitherto 
have we been prosecuting the argument taken from 
the natural principle of self-love and self-preserva- 
tion. We shall now proceed upon another, and 
prove, that not only because we love ourselves, 
but also because every portion and property, whe- 
ther of body or soul, has its peculiar office and 



BOOK THE FITTH. 275 

significancy, therefore the sum of all our interests 
and concernments lies adequate to these collectively. 
To begin with the body ; if any of its parts are 
mis-shaped, enfeebled, or maimed, do we not en- 
deavour to cover it from the eye? If we cannot 
hide it quite, do not we make a mighty pother to 
keep it at least as concealed as we can ? And what 
painful treatment and discipline do we cheerfully 
undergo to have all set right again, and the part 
restored to its natural form and appearance, though 
perhaps instead of recovering the perfect use of it, 
we shall render it more unserviceable than it was 
before ? The reason is apparent. For every man 
being under indispensable obligations to love and 
value himself throughout, and that purely and 
immediately for the sake of himself, he is necessi- 
tated too to love and value for their own sakes all 
the parts of himself, as constituting that whole 
which he loves for itself. And so again, as for 
the motions and figurations of the parts of the 
body, has not nature ordained a certain rule 
of decorum and uniformity in these ? Does it no* 
lie upon a cavalier to avoid unseemliness and ab- 
surdities in his gate, his manner of sitting, and the 
adjustment of his mouth and countenance? Is it 
not shocking, when we see a man's nature tortured 
and distressed, either by the aukwardness of his 
action, or his placing himself out of figure ? And 
seeing our limbs are under such a regulation as 
this, can it be denied of the body's comeliness and 



Tl6 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

symmetry, that it is for itself desirable and valuable? 
We are satisfied that by the body's being disfigured 
or dismembered, we are really and immediately 
incommoded ; is it not all reason then, that a 
graceful personage should be reckoned so much 
the more a valuable and desirable advantage? If 
we are tied to laws in our motions and postures, 
can beauty be a thing undeserving our regard ? So 
for health, strength, ease, are they not precious and 
to be coveted, for the intrinsic good of them as well as 
for the consequent benefits and opportunities? For 
as certainly as our nature is desirous of consumma- 
tion and undefectiveness, so certainly it prizes and 
affects irrespectively and for the essential impor- 
tance of it, that condition of the body which in- 
cludes all these, as being the most natural ; for the 
measures of nature are utterly broke by sickness, 
pain, or loss of strength. Come we forward to 
the powers and affections of the soul, an object of 
contemplation every way more bright and excellent, 
and wherein the drift and purpose of nature is 
much more discernible and conspicuous, than in 
the frame of the body. And first : our very con- 
stitution is seasoned with so passionate a desire 
and love of knowledge and information, that it will 
not bear the least dispute, whether we should 
trouble ourselves about attaining them, were it not 
for the encouragements they meet with in the 
world : for what shall we think of the genius of 
those youngsters that will not be brow- beaten or 



BOOK THE FIFTH. 277 

whipped out of their contemplations and searches? 
but are obstinately inquisitive under the terrors of the 
rod, and transported with improvement at any price? 
thattakeaprideand pleasure in being communicative, 
and pay their attendance to pompous solemnities, 
plays, and the like public entertainments, and so 
heartily admire them, as at any time to lose break- 
fast., dinner, and supper for them ? Has not every 
body beheld, how furiously some people are ad- 
dicted, and how entirely devoted to study and 
science ? What pennances, what hardships they 
will embrace, what risques they will run of destroy- 
ing their health, and how little they value their 
money and land, when learning and books have 
seized their affections? How severely they will 
work and rack the brain, and think themselves 
richly rewarded in the pleasure of being edified? 
Homer, I presume, alluded to this, in the fable of 
the sirens and their singing. It was not so much 
the melody of their notes, nor the variety of their 
divisions, nor the novelty and singularity of their 
strains that had power enough to interrupt a voyage, 
as their pretences to penetration, and their promises 
of instruction. It was an effect of this artifice, 
that so many vessels were lodged upon the rocks 
thereabouts, and to this very tune they call upon 
Ulysses in thore lines of Homer, which, with other 
parts of him, I have translated upon occasion, 
O decus Argulicum, quin puppim flect'u Ulysses, 
8sc. 



278 CICERO OF MORAl ENDS. 



Hero, this way gently steer, 

Hither the pride of Hellas bring, 
Bring Ulysses, bring him near, 
And let the knowing warrior hear 

The wonders which we sing. 

We salute in mystic lays, 

Each vessel as it ploughs the sea, 
In vain upon the canvas plays 
A wanton gale : the machin stays 

BecalnTd with harmony. 

Secrets of nature and of art 

We to the passenger impart ; 
With learning universal sate his mind ; 
And leave no mist of ignorance behind; 
But send hiin home, the wisest of his kind. 

Hark ! thy vict'ries we relate, 

The vengeance of the gods, and Troy's deserved fate ; 

The kings, the fights, the fleet, the tents, 

The cause, the conduct, and events — 

By the way, the poet was aware, that if he had 
made his hero surrender to the magic of the per- 
formance, he must have sunk the credit of his 
poem. They promise him, if he will attend, his 
understanding shall be enlarged ; and who that 
is a true friend and admirer of wisdom, as was 
Ulysses, had not suspended the remembrance of 
his native soil upon those terms? No; it is a 
fruitless and freakish curiosity to aim at an indefi- 
nite expanse cf knowledge ; but yet when a man 



BOOK THE FIFTH, 379 

falls in love with letters and speculations, upon a 
view of, and with regard to the more noble objects 
and uses of them, it is a certain sign of an exalted 
soul. To what a stress of intension were Archi- 
medes's thoughts engaged ; who when the enemy- 
made themselves masters of his country, was so 
hard at work with his compasses upon his slate, 
as not to perceive or know any thing of the matter ; 
how was all the soul of Aristoxenus ravished and 
overflowed with music ? What a blessing did Ari- 
stophanes account it, that he could spend the full 
period of his life in a course of learning ? Pythago- 
ras, Plato, Democritus, did they think much, to 
travel to and over the remotest parts of the world 
in quest of improvement and information ? It is 
impossible any man, that was ever desirous of or 
pleased with the knowledge of any thing worth 
knowing, can be a stranger to the truth of all this. 
Some people, I grant, will tell you, that it is the 
pleasure accompanying concerns of this nature 
which induces us to mind them : but then either 
they do not observe, or else forget how frequently, 
when we have no manner of advantage in prospect, 
nay and when it is more likely we shall be losers 
and sufferers by it, we perceive a most exquisite 
and lively satisfaction in furnishing and filling our 
intellectuals ; and therefore, it must needs be, 
that all such operations and exercises are valuable 
and in esteem with us upon their own account. 
Indeed the case is so plain that I am ashamed to 



280 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

say more of it. Let every man put the question 
to himself, how he finds him influenced and af- 
fected when he is forming a judgment either upon 
the motions of the stars and heavenly bodies, or 
the occult dispensations in the natural world ; and 
what it is which makes history so very agreeable 
to him, that he cannot forbear following the series 
as far as it will lead him ; that he turns back to 
consult afresh those passages which he does not 
perfectly retain ; and cannot find it in his heart 
to give over till he is come to the close of the nar- 
ration. I am sensible too that history is a pro- 
fitable and useful study as well as a diverting one ; 
but how shall we account for the pleasure and 
entertaiment of reading romances and comedies, 
which we can make no advantage of? and for our 
forwardness to learn the names of men famous in 
their generations, of what families they came, the 
places of their births, and a thousand other the 
like superficial circumstances? Again ; what is the 
promising motive with plebeians and mechanics, 
and fellows that cannot have the confidence to 
suppose they shall ever enterprise any thing con- 
siderable ; that these too should be setting up for 
historians? and old withered stagers, with one 
foot in the grave, when past the possibility of 
exerting themselves, do they not, at that time of day 
more especially, please themselves with reading and 
hearkening to relations of any great exploits or public 
transactions? There is therefore no doubt to be made, 



BOOK THE FIFTH. 281 

but that we are spirited on to fructify our under- 
standings bv those encouragements and recom- 
mendations, which the means and matter of im- 
provement have in them. Agreeably hereunto 
the old philosophers represent their wise man as 
one of the inhabitants in the fortunate islands, 
master at large of his own time and actions, sup- 
plied through other hands with all the necessaries 
of life, and his only and perpetual business, to 
search and examine into the nature of things. 
That contemplations of this kind are not only 
essentials of positive happiness, but a sovereign 
antidote against affliction and sorrow, is certain. 
The expedient has been commonly made use of 
by the unfortunate, when in a state of captivity 
or thraldom, under confinement, or in exile, to 
relieve and amuse their melancholy. Thus Pha- 
lereus Demetrius, once at the head of affairs in 
this very city, when he was driven out of his coun- 
try against all right and reason, retired to Alexan- 
dria, put himself under the protection of king 
Ptolemy, and became a mighty proficient in this 
same philosophy which I now recommend. Theo- 
phrastus was his director ; and he composed many 
admirable pieces during that leisure which his 
troubles gave him. Nor can we imagine he would 
have thus employed himself, under those circum- 
stances, for any other end, than purely to cultivate 
his faculties, and nourish his reason. Cneius Au- 
fidius, of the praetorian order, an excellent scholar, 
2 o 



.282 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

though he wanted the benefit of his eyes, has de- 
clared in my hearing, he would not care what 
external advantages he renounced, if he could 
but have his sight. Even sleep we should look 
upon as a grievance and inconsistency in nature, 
were it not such a refreshment as our bodies re- 
quire, and the sovereign restorative when we are 
spent and wearied. Otherwise, the best effects 
of it are an absolute insensibility and inactivity. 
So that we should be very well pleased, if things 
might be ordered in such a manner, as that either 
we could dispense with this repose, or take it out 
in a more commodious way. For when we are 
set upon business or studying, we put a force upon 
nature, and make a practice of breaking our rest. 
There is no one man, no nor animal, but what 
gives very sufficient, and, in. truth, most convinc- 
ing proofs of the soul's operating perpetually, and 
of its utter- abhorrence to an eternal stagnation. 
This we may gather from what we find in little 
children ; for to them I must refer myself again, 
though you may tell me, too much of one thing is 
good for nothing ; and yet all the philosophers of 
old, and the sect I speak up for especially, were 
of the mind, that infants are best able to teach us 
what it is our nature would be at, and therefore 
they are, ever and anon looking back to the cra- 
dle, and the go- cart. Now we may observe, 
that though at first the little ,ones lie helpless 
and unftctive, yet so soon as they are in a condi- 



BOOK THE FIFTH. 283 

tion, they become such eager sportsmen, that though 
you chastise them, they will not forsake their beloved 
recreations, be they never so toilsome and slavish : 
and this muddling mercurial humour grows up with 
them. It would be a heart-breaking to be condemned 
to such a nap as Endymion's, though beforehand we 
were sure of a succession of the most glorious and 
obliging dreams. Opium can do no more than lay 
us finally asleep. It is matter of fact, though very 
unaccountable, that the souls and bodies even of 
the greatest miracles of idleness and negligence are 
always in motion, and when no longer held in hand 
by some obstacle that will not be managed, they 
are either for cramming, gaming, or tattling ; and 
if they have not had education good enough, to be 
able to pass away the time with smatterings of 
scholarship, then they will employ themselves any 
how to no purpose, though it were in scratching lines 
and figures upon walls and tables. Nay, and the very 
brute-animals, which, for a fancy, we keep up and 
confine, are disturbed and uneasy under the re- 
straint, and impatient to recover that full range and 
freedom into which they were born, though they have 
more and better feeding than if thev were to live 
wild. The nobler birth we have had, and the more 
generous institutions we have imbibed, the more 
we disdain a total exemption from employment, 
and a life of luxury and pleasure. The people of a 
private station and fortune find themselves work at 
home. Those of a more sanguine, aspiring temper, 



284 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

thrust up to a share in the public ministry, and the 
tuition of the common- wealth; while others are as 
much bigotted to the business of studying and lite- 
rature. Now so little of enjoyment and gusto in 
it has the sort of life last-mentioned, to flatter those 
who follow it, that they must and do make familiar 
to them the most earnest intension of thought, and 
the harshest acts of self-denial ; and so they may 
but turn the imperial, or rather the divine part of 
themselves, their under standing and reason, to the 
best account, it is all one to them what pleasures 
they quit, or what drudgery they do. With reve- 
rence they consult the collections of those who have 
gone before them, and contribute their own. This 
is their occupation, and they are never to be sated. 
No ; the meaner concerns of the world are set 
aside and forgotten, and they mount after a quarry 
worth a thousand of it. So engaging and satisfac- 
tory a thing is conversing with books, that those 
very men who have set up their rest m the pursuit 
of external profit and pleasure, have yet made it 
the business of their lives to search into the nature 
of things, and account for their dependances and 
operations. From all which it is demonstrated, 
that man is horn to action, of one kind or other : 
for action is either first-rate or second ; the former 
a worthier kind a great deal than the latter. The 
principal exercise of all, if you will take my word 
for it, and theirs whose hypothesis we are now upon, 
is to contemplate and learn the nature and courses 



BOOK THE FIFTH. 285 

of the heavenly bodies, and, by dint of reason, to 
dissect and unriddle the secret complications and 
communications of the parts of the universe one 
with another. The second best is to do the public 
what services we can, and to learn and practise all 
those duties of prudence, temperance, fortitude, 
justice, and every other virtue and habit suitable 
to virtue, which are comprised under the title and 
character of honest urn, and for the knowledge and 
practice of which we are beholden to nature, who 
shews us the way and trains us to them. For all 
things are diminutive and slight in the state of their 
imperfection and nonage, and as they come for- 
ward they gather bulk and vigour ; nor can it be 
otherwise, because during the first scene of life we 
are spiritless, and tender, and uncapable either of 
judging or enterprising for the best. Virtue and 
a happy life, like the poles, are not to be come at 
presently, and a longer time it requires to give our- 
selves a thorough knowledge about them. It is a 
saying of Plato's, and a golden one, he that can 
overtake wisdom, and reach a right sense of things, 
though extreme old age overtakes him first \ is a 
happy man. By this time enough has been said 
of the primitive advantages and services of our na- 
ture. Next, let the subsequent and more significant 
be considered. In the first formation of an human 
body, things are contrived, as that it should be 
capable of some lesser energies and performances 
immediately upon its birth, and afterwards, by de- 



286" 0ICER0 OF MORAL ENDS. 

grees, of other operations and achievements, till at 
last it becomes able, in a great measure, to act 
without the instrumentality of external and adven- 
titious aids. And nature has taken much the same 
course with the mind ; for she has allowed it the 
privilege of sensories, whereby it is so well accom- 
modated with perceptions, as to be in a condition 
for working up itself to the use of its powers, with 
little or no foreign assistance. But yet she has 
submitted to the discretion of man, whether his 
greatest excellency shall be in him or not, having 
qualified his rational faculties for the entertainment 
and exercise of every virtue, and antecedently to 
any acquisitions of learning imprinted imperfect 
ideas of the greatest and most transcendent objects 
and things, and brought us so far on our way, as 
just to initiate us in some faint imitations and airy 
essays of virtue, only to give us a taste, and put us 
in a road. Thence-forward it is our province, which 
cannot extend farther than art or industry », to look 
about us, and complete the work which nature has 
begun, and never to think we have gone far enough 
with it, until it is as consummate as it can be. 
And when it is so, it will deserve to be deemed in- 
finitely more valuable in itself and of higher account 
than our senses or any of the other forementioned 
perfections or accomplishments of the body; infi- 
nitely, I say, for the distance of perfection between 
the one and the other is so wide that our apprehen- 
sion cannot measure it. Thus virtue, we see, and 



BOOK THE FIFTH. 287 

the practice which she moves in, demands from us 
with a manifest right, our utmost veneration and 
application; and whatever of that nature resides 
within or is exerted by the soul, comes under the 
title of honest urn ; of which more particularly yet 
in the sequel, where we shall observe, what ideas 
belong to the severals of that denomination, by 
what names they are denoted and distinguished, 
and what is the force and importance of them. At 
present let me rather carry our consequence forward, 
and shew you that these honesta (virtuous and 
honourable principles and practices) exclusively of 
their merit and value resulting from the principle 
of self-love, are essentially and for themselves de- 
sirable and excellent. And here again the little 
children must be summoned, as being the mirrors 
which reflect the fairest image of nature. How 
eager and emulating are they at their trials of skill? 
and how hazardous and difficult are those trials? 
How do they hug themselves if they come off 
winners? And how simply they look, if defeated? 
How highly they resent it when any thing is laid 
to their charge? How well-pleased are they with 
commendation and applause ? How furiously will 
they bestir themselves to supplant and over-top 
their fellows? How perfect and lasting a remem- 
brance do they retain of their benefactors ? How 
ready do they shew themselves to make the most 
grateful acknowledgments ? And the better dis- 
position and temper they are of, the plainer and 



CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

deeper characters of these honest a they have about 
them. Thus our childhood itself is not without 
rudiments and representations of virtue. But 
when arrived to an age of maturity and discretion, 
what man is there to be found so malevolent and 
irreconcileable to human nature, as not to be scan- 
dalized at moral turpitude, nor to take a good lik- 
ing to moral honesty? The lewdness of some 
young libertines, can any one forbear being vexed 
at it ? The modesty and staidness of others who, 
though a disinterested party, is not delighted and 
charmed with? What is more detestable than 
the name of the traitor Pull us Numitor of Fregellse, 
though the common-wealth of Rome was the better 
for him? On the other hand, is not the memory 
of Codrus reverenced for the dear-bought rescue 
of Athens? And are not the daughters of Eric- 
theus at this day in great esteem and favour with 
every body ? Who speaks a good word for Tubu- 
lus? or a slight one of Aristides ? As often as we 
read or hear of instances of piety, fidelity, and 
generosity can we avoid being strangely won upon 
and affected? 1 do not say we only that are ho- 
nourably descended, and have been suitably bred. 
How will the base-bom blunderers in the upper- 
gallery, clap at those words of Pylades in the play, 
I am the man, I am Orestes, and at the answer of 
Orestes, Believe him not, I am Orestes, I? And 
when both of them offered to discover himself the 
guilty person, and to help out the king at a loss, 



EOOK THE FIFTH. 289 

we heartily wish they might both come off, and 
have the satisfaction of living always together. 
Whenever this drama comes upon the stage; to 
what extasies are we raiser] of concern and admi- 
ration? Which makes it a clear case, that to be 
ready and resolved to acquit ourselves like men of 
honour, especially when there is nothing to be got 
by it, and a great deal to be lost, is such a disposi- 
tion of soul as every body is really constrained to 
encourage and applaud. Neither are the examples 
of this kind recorded among the poets and mytho- 
logists only ; the historians have them in plenty 
too, and none so many as our own. When there 
was occasion for a person of most exemplary piety 
and integrity to conduct into Rome the image of 
the Idm&n goddess, we found such a one in Publius 
Scipio; from us monarchs have received their de- 
liverers and protectors; we have had generals 
that, to divert the ruin of their country, have thrown 
themselves without reluctance into the jaws of 
deatli ; and consuls that precautioned a king, one 
of the worst enemies Rome ever contested with, 
when they might have had him poisoned, and ex- 
pected him with his army, every hour, before the 
walls of the city. We can pride ourselves in the 
example of a woman that having been forced, struck 
a dagger to her heart, to expiate the pollution, and 
a father that did as much for his daughter, to 
prevent it. Now it is notorious in these and a 
thousand other transactions of the same nature 

2 p 



290 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

unspecified that the agents had so just a sense of 
the merit of the action, as rather than they would 
not go through- stitch, to throw up the greatest ad- 
vantages and satisfactions ; and that when we cele- 
brate them for what they did, the worthiness of the 
practice is the sole reason inducing us to recognize 
it. . These historical premisses take up little room, 
and a much greater number of instances, I might 
appeal to, but these, though there were no more, 
will make good our conclusion, that every species of 
virtue and that honestum which results from it and 
is essential to it, is desirable and valuable upon its 
own account. Further ; this honestum has not, in 
the latitude of it, any thing of a more glorious and 
general importance than the obligations and laws of 
human society, and the mutual intercourses of com- 
merce and kindness between man and man. These 
commence from that natural affection which the 
parents bear to v their issue, and to one another in 
the relation to husband and wife, extending pro- 
portionably to ail the individuals of the same family ; 
and spread in order to relations and kinsfolk, whe- 
ther by blood 'or marriage; to friends, neighbours, 
fellow- citizens, political colleagues and confederates, 
and ultimately to all mankind. The purpose and 
effect of this principle is, that every man gives every 
man his dtie, and, as much as in him lies, keeps up 
the spirit of! concord and humanity in the world ; 
and this is the meaning of justice, and those-other 
virtues which concur with justice, natural affection, 



BOOK THE FIFTH. 291 

good-nature, liberality, beneficence, court eousness, 
and the like. All which have their dependance 
upon justice; not but they conspire and co-operate 
with every other virtue. For that principle being 
wedged into human nature which the Greeks call 
TTohiTixov, the principle of correspondence and 
linking our interests, every sort of virtue, must 
have a communication with those of agreement, 
unity and benevolence in societies, as justice reci- 
procally influences, enforces and seeks to every 
other virtue. From whence it follows that honesty 
must be impracticable without courage and wisdom. 
So that this honestum, it seems, is equivalent to the 
aforesaid concurrence and combination of virtues, 
and compounded of virtue in the habit, and virtue 
in the practice. Consequently a course of life 
which answers to such a conjunction and course of 
virtues is entitled to the appellations of regular, 
honest, consistent, steady, and agreeable to nature. 
By the way ; though the philosophers confess that 
all the virtues are thus united and blended with 
one another, yet at the same time they find no 
difficulty to distinguish and sort them. It is true, 
they are in such a manner connected and compli- 
cated as that they enter into the essence of each 
other, and cannot be dispersed. However each 
virtue keeps its peculiar province. Fortitude 
carries us th rough labours, disasters, and dangers; 
temperance curbs us in the fruition of pleasure ; 
prudence discerns between good and evil ; justice 



292 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

distributes to every man his due. And forasmuch 
as each virtue has its concern for and regard unto 
persons and things abroad, and is desirous and 
effective of the good of others, it is moreover evi- 
dent that our friends, our brethren, relations, coun- 
try men> and the great universal society, all mankind 
in consort, are propter se expetendi, to be valued 
and loved upon their own account \ and for their 
own proper sakes. Nevertheless they constitute no 
part of the essence of our ultimate and final good. 
So then here are two different kinds of the propter 
se expetenda, things to be valued and loved upon 
their own account, the first of those ivhich makes 
out the summum bonum, and refer to the mind and 
body ; the other, of those external and remote ones, 
in which the mind and body have not an immediate 
interest, as friends, parents, children, relations, 
native country, which are all dear and valuable for 
their own sakes too but not in the same nature and 
respect as the former. Indeed if all such valuable 
externals were a part of the summum bonum, it 
were plainly impossible that we should any way 
make ourselves masters of it. You will ask me, 
how it is that they come into the definition of the 
summum bonum, the relations of friendship, consan- 
guinity, affinity, 8$c. and yet make no part of it ? I an- 
swer that the business of every virtue in its own way 
and kind is to vindicate and support these externals by 
the discharge of its respective duties. It is in itself of 
singular advantage and good consequence to love 



BOOK THE FIFTH. $£3 

and honour our friends and our parents, because 
the discharge of those duties <K)es anions the recte 
facta, the just and good practices which are the 
results of virtue. These good practices the men 
of an accomplished wisdom are addicted to at the 
mere motion and direction of nature ; whereas the 
less perfect and improved, though they may be 
persons very gallantly disposed and resolved, pro- 
ceed upon the motives of glory and repute, which 
mimic virtue and honour so to the life, as to be 
frequently mistaken for them. How then would 
it feast the souls of some people with delight and 
satisfaction, could they but once let go the shadow 
that inchants them, and gain a just apprehension 
and an adequate knowledge of the most laudable 
and illustrious excellency of all, a finished virtue? 
Did ever any man, though the most wretched slave 
to pleasure, or delirious with his fever of appetite 
and passion, taste half that rapture in the enjoy- 
ment of his wishes, as the elder Africanus in the 
rout of Hannibal, or the younger in the demolishing 
of Carthage? Who of all the company that re- 
galed themselves upon that festivity in their barges 
on the Tyber, was flushed with as exquisite an 
elevation and joy as the conqueror Lucius Paulus 
himself? when he brought his prisoner king Perses 
Up the river ? Now then, my Lucius make good 
use of your time, an.1 let all the virtues in constel- 
lation shine in youi soul. For by what has 
been urged you understand, that whoever is 



294 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

sufficiently practised in them, has his mind so 
ennobled and fortified, that he cannot help be- 
ing happy, and zvhcn virtue and principles art 
at stake, is indifferent to the best and worst 
vicissitudes of fortune, and wilt be the same steady, 
cheerful man in spite of all changes and revo- , 
hit ions. For though, it is true, the goods of the 
body, as aforesaid, serve to fill up the largest and 
completest measure possible of human happiness, 
yet a man may be very happy without them : 
and so mean and- inconsiderable is their quota that 
like stars before the meridian sun, they are lost 
and buried in the radiancy of virtue. But yet 
as little room as, we know, they take up among 
the const tuents of our happiness, to deny they 
have any at all would be a bold and a partial 
award, and they that have passed it, may do well 
to consider whether or no they remember what 
first natural principles they stand to. No harm 
can come of doing justice to these inferior advan- 
tages, provided the extent of their significancy 
be rightly stated. A philosopher that studies truth ^ 
not ostentation, will be equally inclined not to 
over-rate those conveniences which even the vain- 
est boasters of the high-flown sect allow to be 
secundum naturam, agreeable to nature ; and to 
magnify the pczver and supremacy, as I may say, 
of virtue and honesty to so high a pitch, that 
the other diminuti e advantages, though real, 
shall hardly stand for any in comparison of virtue* 



BOOK THE FIFTH. %95 

This is doing what is fair on both sides, when we 
give virtue all her line, and yet value other tilings 
according to the worth of them. To be short : 
"the dimensions and latitude of summum bonum, 
must reach so far as we now suppose, and can 
reach no further. And all that the other schools 
have done, has been only to take, each for itself, 
a limb of this hypothesis, and make a whole one 
out of it. Aristotle and Thepphrastus frequently 
run high in the commendations of science, and its 
intrinsic excellency. What does Herillus in 
his zeal but set up science for the summum bomim, 
and swear that nothing in the world beside is 
valuable and desirable for itself? The ancients 
are very full upon the topic of slighting and de- 
spising externals. Aristo flies away with it all, 
and assures you that it is not worth while to avoid 
any thing but vice, nor to pursue any tiling but 
virtue. The ancients have made indolence one 
of those things which are agreeable to nature ; 
and this has been since Hieronymus's summum bo- 
num. Callipho had an aching tooth to pleasure, 
and, after him, Diodorus conceived as high an 
opinion of indolence; but they thought it their 
best way to fetch in virtue too; the good which 
we had principally recommended to them. And 
let the patrons of pleasure leap from one little 
evasion to another as long as they please ; let 
them talk big ail the day about virtue, and at last 
aver that pleasure is the only first desirable ; 



$96 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

and again, that use or custom is a second nature, 
and yet by reason of that second nature, they do 
a great many things without proposing pleasure 
for the end of their acting — I say no more of 
them, but come in the last place to the stoics. 
Now these gentlemen have not retailed, but rob- 
bed us of all our philosophy at once. And as 
it is the trick of common felons , when they have 
stole a parcel of goods, to deface and change the 
mark of the owner ; so when the stoics had car- 
ried off our principles ', they disguised the pro- 
priety by altering the terms of expression. And 
therefore the remaining system which is ours, is 
the only one well worthy all men of understanding, 
ingenuity, letters, character ; up to magistrates and 
monarchs. Here Piso stopped, and after a short 
silence, well, says he, what do you think ? Have 
I spoke to purpose in vindication of my cause ? 
This is not the first time by a great many sir, said 
I, of your giving us so right a notion of these 
things, as to make us wish we could have your 
help at every turn, and then there would be little 
occasion for the assistance of the Greeks. Besides, 
I should be so much the more pleased with yours, 
because I remember, Staseas the Neapolitan, a 
peripatetic of the first form, and your preceptor, 
when he would set out the sense of this institution, 
went another way to work, as being one of those 
who maintain, that prosperous or adverse fortune, 
external or circumstantial good and ill, carry a 



BOOK THE FIFTH. 305 

to contemplating and examining the ceconomy of 
things, upon a prospect that he should at last by 
that means obtain his lu&ujxia, serenity and cheer- 
fulness of soul, or as he frequently calls it, his ' 
a&ajxS/a^ security, which was his notion of summum 
bonum ; and an excellent one, but, for all that, 
Democritus was far from bringing philosophy to 
perfection. What he has contributed touching 
the principles of morality and virtue is inconsider- 
able, and ill-digested. This province was left for 
Socrates who begun with it privately in this city, 
and afterwards exercised it publicly in the place 
where we are met. It was taken for granted at 
that time of day that a happy life as well as a good 
one is wrapped up in virtue. The men of our 
school made Zeno sensible of this, and what does 
he presently but move in another form, as the 
lawyers word it? For his sense is the same with 
ours ; and yet you make no exceptions against 
him! We are charged with repugnancies, and I 
know not what, while he slips his neck out of the 
collar by absurdly changing the terms ! Metullus, 
quoth Zeno, was no happier than Regulus, not 
but he had the better fortune of the two, that is, 
the more eligible, though not the more desirable, 
and were a man left to his own discretion, he 
would rather be Metellus than Regulus. Here is 
the difference in short ; I style that the happier 
condition which he calls the preferable and more 
eligible, though at the same time I set no more by 
2r 



306 €ICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

it than the stoics. I signify things by their ordi- 
nary names, and they trump up their own! So 
that whenever they begin to speak, we must have 
an interpreter, as when ambassadors or foreigners 
are to concert affairs with the senate. Whatever 
is according to nature, that I term good; and 
whatever is contrary, evil. So does Chrysippus 
in the streets or at home, as well as I, though the 
man is dejhiition-hound in the school. And is there 
then any such great necessity that the philosophers 
and the learned should express the value of things 
in a different strain from unlearned and ordinary 
people ? For after all, had not these adepti thought 
their very beings of a superior kind, when they 
had settled their "valuations, they might as well 
have spoke in the language of their felbxv-mortals ! 
But let them coin their own words till they are 
weary, they cannot alter the nature, of things. Now 
then, lest you correct me a third time for expa- 
tiating, let us return to the charge of inconsistency. 
You are pleased to fix it upon the terms, whereas 
it rather seems to lie in the thing, as you will see 
if you take it all together. First, the most eminent 
stoics contend as much as we for the truth of this 
doctrine, that so great is the consequence and im- 
portance of virtue, as infinitely to exceed all lesser 
considerations : secondly, those advantages which 
the stoics represent in such a manner, as though 
they had a mind they should make the best figure 
possible, and which they recommend for accept- 



BOOK THE FIFTH. 307 

able, eligible, preferable, and mention either in 
terms unheard of and invented by themselves, 
producta, for instance, and reducta, (as if one 
should say promotables and reject idles) or in terms 
equivalent to those they are displeased at ; for 
where is the difference between having an inclina- 
tion to a thing and being ready to choose it? If 
there is any, that which is in election, and chosen, 
has in my apprehension the better of it : these 
advantages, I say, pass with me for good : thirdly, 
the question is, hozv good and valuable I pretend 
them to be. And if these bona, good things, as I 
call them, are no more desirable and valuable in 
my account than the product a of the stoics are 
eligible in theirs, it is sure that upon being com- 
pared with and placed near the beams of virtue, 
they must necessarily disappear, and shrink off. 
Still, that cannot be properly a happy life, which 
has the least alloy of evil in it. And so by the 
same logic a yielding, full-eared crop, if it harbours 
a xveed, would not make amends for the reaping ! 
Nor a ship-full of jewels be worth unlading, if a 
cable has suffered in the voyage ! For,is not each of 
these every way parallel to the case of a happy 
life ? And will you not make a judgment of the 
whole from what is known of the most material 
part? I hope I may with better assurance call 
whatever is according to nature, good, and refuse 
to cancel an immemorial title than affect innova- 
tions, and disgrace virtue so as to put other things 



505 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

in the scale against it, for this the stoics themselves ' 
do by their distinctions, whereas virtue turns the 
balance against the globe. It is a received usage 
to give a thing its denomination from that which it 
principally consists of. As we say, suppose of this 
or that man that he is always merry or pleasant. 
And will it justify our inverting the character, if 
once in'his life he should have a fit of the spleen; 
Luciiius observes that Marcus Crassus was seen 
one single time to laugh, and yet, says the same 
author, he restrained his badge of aye'Xaerros or 
ir risible to his dying day. Polycrates, the Samian, " 
is a known instance of felicity, who never had sus- 
tained any loss or inconvenience till he threw a 
ring, which was highly prized by him, into the sea 
with his own hand. ^So he wilfully created himself 
one miscarriage, which nevertheless was afterwards 
retrieved when the fish that had swallowed the ring, 
was taken, and cut up. And yet either this man 
was never truly happy, as being a tyrant, and 
consequently wanting in wisdom : or if he had 
been a wise man, even then he could not have been 
unhappy, when Darius's project, Oroetes, drove 
him to his execution. But was he not very cruelly 
dealt with ? He was ; and for all that, virtue 
might have made a moot -point of his calamities. 
Are the peripatetics permitted to maintain that the 
proportion of good in the life of a good man, that 
is to say, of a man zvise and virtuous, through- 
out preponderates the proportion of his evil? And, 



BOOK THE FIFTH. 30$ 

prav by the way, whose assertion is this? The 
stoics? Not so ! It is the doctrine of that party 
that make pleasure and pain the test of all good 
and evil; they declare loudly that the condition of 
a wise man is never without more of the former 
than of the latter! Now if those people who pro- 
fess they would not, but for the sake of a conse- 
quent pleasure, so much as rise orT their couches 
for virtue, ascribe so much to it ; how are we to 
express ourselves, we who vouch ever a one of the 
lowest perfections of the mind to transcend so in- 
comparably all the advantages, taken together, 
which belong to the body, as in a manner to null 
and erase their very being ? Had ever any of us 
the impudence to imagine that a wise man though 
never so embarrassed would, if it were in his 
power, depart from his virtue to purchase his ease? 
Or that it may possibly be more advisable, and the 
better way, to act basely, and thrive, than honestly, 
and suffer ; notwithstanding we make no scruple 
of calling those things evils which the stoics call 
adversities ? We can as little pardon the defection 
of Dionysius Heracleotes, who for a pain in his 
eyes deserted his sect, as the stoics themselves. 
Zeno had done his best to persuade him that pain 
is no pain, and yet for his life could he not be con- 
vinced (as, in truth, how should any one?) that, 
because it implies no moral turpitude, and may be 
managed, therefore there is nothing of evil in it. 
Had he been one of us, he would infallibly have 



310 CICERO OF MORAL ENDS. 

stood his ground, because we must have acknow- 
ledged it an evil. The rules we inculcate for a 
man's bearing up with courage against it, are the 
same as the stoics press, nay, and your own Arce- 
silas too, who in his heart was as good & peripate- 
tic as Polemo his master, only he must have leave 
to splutter and wrangle in his way. For when he 
was tormented with the gout, Carneades, Epicu- 
rus's great crony, payed him a visit, and perceiving 
that Carneades moved in dudgeon towards the 
door. Hark you, my friend, says he, not so fast, 
(and laid his hand upon his feet and his breast,) 
it is not ascended hither yet. Still, I warrant him, 
Jie would have been glad to be rid of it. Thus it 
appears what a bundle of inconsistencies you meet 
with in my philosophy ! To be short, since under 
virtue are comprehended such divine and celestial 
excellencies, that wherever it resides, and exerts 
itself in laudable practices and memorable actions, 
thither misery and wretchedness cannot approach, 
though pain and molestation may; it goes with me 
for unquestionable, that all wise men are always 
happy, and yet one wise man may be happier than 
another. Drive the nail home, Piso, said I, and 
arm that assertion at all points, for if you can 
maintain that post, we shall be both your prose- 
lytes, my dear Cicero and myself. Seriously, I 
think, said Quintus, there wants no further corro- 
boration: and I am excessively pleased to find 
true what has been so generally denied, that that 



BOOK THE FIFTH. 



philosophy is the best laid together, the furniture 
and equipage of which I always preferred to the 
whole estate and substance of any other ; having 
by experience found it so pregnant and fruitful as 
to supply me with whatever materials or utensils 
my sort of study required. No, said Pomponius 
bantering, My philosophy for solidity and subtilty, 
against a thousand ! Well but in good earnest, 
you have obliged me, Piso, by rendering what I 
was confident could never be rendered, into Latin, 
and as pure and proper too as the Greek of the 
respective originals. But our time is up, gentle- 
men ; let us, if you please, adjourn to my quarters. 
Accordingly it being conceived we had done 
enough for once, we went along with Pomponius 
to his end of the town. 



THE END. 



APPENDIX, 

BY TH£ 

TRANSLATOR. 



OUR philosopher having in a direct and methodical way 
of confutation, first overthrown the system of Epicurus by 
that of the stoics, and ihe stoical by ihat of the old academy, 
and the peripatetics; or in other words, having effectually 
and demonstratively proved that in sensual or corporeal 
pleasure cannot lie the perfection of human happiness, 
because there are in virtue satisfactions better accommo- 
dated and more truly grateful to human nature ; and again, 
that virtue alone without all the external goods of body 
and fortune cannot accomplish our happiness, because we 
are born with a capacity of enjoying also those lesser ad- 
vantages : it yet remains to be considered, whether virtue 
in concert with such externals, reaches the measure, and 
makes out the whole extent of that felicity which falls within 
the condition of our nature. And the rather, because Piso 
himself has been obliged in the last period of his discourse 
to make this concession, that let a man, after all, be never 
so wise, virtuous, fortunate, and happy, yet disappointment, 
and trouble, and vexation, may gaul him ever and anon, 
which, even upon the footing of his own principles, is as 
much as to say that no man in this world can be happy ; 
for if our happiness must be deficient when any of those 
things are wanting to it which are agreeable to nature, as cer- 
tainly as ease, prosperity, and quiet, are agreeable to nature, 
so certainly when our affairs are discouraging, the comforts 
and conveniences of life denied or detained, or any of our 



314 APPENDIX. 

pursuits or stratagems defeated, we must be at least pro- 
portionably unhappy, and out of sorts. Wherefore, con- 
sidering the general uncertainty and variety of interests and 
events, and that immediate union and communication be* 
tween the several parts and powers of our nature, by virtue 
of which not a fibre in our bodies can be affected with 
any disagreeable sensation, but our whole being is in an 
instant disordered and upon the fret, it is impossible that 
these untoward circumstances should not frequently betide 
us, and consequently our happiness will be precarious, 
incoherent, incompetent, instead of that to which the 
goodness of heaven has most evidently created us, accord- 
ing to that capacity of being happy which it has made 
peculiar to human nature. Since therefore so complete a 
blessedness is unattainable in this life, or rather, since even 
a tolerable degree of happiness is more than comes to 
the share of the majority of human kind, we may and must 
as assuredly depend upon its completion in a future state, 
provided we do not wilfully run the risk of forfeiting our 
title, as upon the divine benevolence or veracity itself. 

This argument has, from three known and experimental 
proofs, that of the fickleness and mutability of a comfort- 
able or a prosperous estate ; that of its necessary brevity ; 
that of its unfrequency and imperfectness, been enforced 
and illustrated, as by many others, so particularly by a 
near relation of mine, now among the blessed, in his book 
Of the demonstration of the law of nature, from sect. 16th 
to the end ; so that it would be as superfluous as unbecom- 
ing to review those evidences of a future state, which these 
obvious and inevitable conditions of sublunary happiness 
afford. But beside these there is a lamentable imperfec- 
tion essential to it, and which, though fortune were as 
much at our command, as entire, steady, and constant as 
virtue, can neither be remedied nor supplied, but by a 
state of more perfect and plenary happiness in reversion ; 
and that is the inadequacy of the fullest and the most 
consummate happiness imaginable on earth, to that 
capacity of being happy which belongs to human nature ; 
for upon supposition, that after any man has obtained, 
which no man ever could, a confluence of all the blessings 
and enjoyments which are compatible to his mortality, his 
faculties and powers are still capable of other and greater 
and more durable satisfactions, as undoubtedly as nature 



APPENDIX. 315 

always acts for ends, and every end must be adequate and 
answerable to the capacity of that being whose end it 
is, which has been all along, and must ever be presup- 
posed in this question, there is reserved for us after the 
•period of this present life another condition of happiness, 
to fill up the measure and reach the full breadth of that 
capacity of being happy, which is proper to the nature of 
man. bo that if this supposition be demonstrated, the 
peripatetic model stands equally self-condemned with all 
the rest, or rather more than any of them, because that 
especially insists upon an exact proportion and parity be- 
tween the end and the capacity of the pursuant. 

I shall not examine whether our corporeal organs and 
sensories are in their present condition capable of more 
exquisite and transcendent satisfactions, than those general 
and ordinary ones which are common to mankind. I do 
not doubt but the patriarchs, prophets, and holy men, in 
those visions and representations which God exhibited to 
them, found the impressions which were then made upon 
their senses more exhilarating and delightful, than any of 
the most innocent and delicious gratifications, natural to 
the constitution of an human body; and hence, I conceive, 
it was that St. Peter upon mount Tabor proposed the 
erecting of three tabernacles or residences, for he was 
there an eye-witness of the jxsyaXMoTus of Christ, his majesty 
and regal splendor, and of the honour and w^ e*5? &I-jisj the 
imperial glory and grandeur which he received of the 
Father ; and for this reason, I conceive, as well as for the 
benefit of those oracular and important discourses which 
passed between Christ and his two Prophets, the Apost/e 
took for granted that it was good for him and his fellow- 
disciples to abide there. But then from cases so extraor- 
dinary as these, we can hardly infer, that our organs are in 
themselves qualified for the perception and enjoyment of 
any satisfactions more lively and copious, than those which 
vulgar objects and methods excite. And though perhaps 
by a long series of arguments, and a more careful and cu- 
rious inspection into the structure of the parts of the body 
this might be shewn, or at least made probable ; yet in 
regard the proof requires more time and paper than can 
be conveniently allotted to this appendix, and because by 
a shorter medium, and the more sure word of prophesy we 
are certified, that hereafter the Son of God will change our 



$\6 APPENDIX. 

tile body that it may he like unto his glorious body, 
and that then we shall be admitted to a sight and sense of 
those good things zvhich neither eye has seen, nor ear 
heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man /# 
conceive. I shall decline all further inquiries upon this 
head. 

The soul of man takes in the three faculties of appre~ 
hension, judgment, and will, so that if by virtue of its ap- 
prehensive power it is able to entertain purer and larger 
ideas, and a greater variety, than it can procure and collect 
in the station to which it is here confined ; and so the 
judgment being more improved and better furnished, might 
compare, distinguish, and determine more clearly, com- 
prehensively, directly, and swiftly than now ; and the will 
by the advantage of such easier and more authentic direc- 
tions, take right measures, and follow the best bias ; 
then it is in a condition to pursue and attain higher ends, 
and a more perfect felicity, than that of the peripatetical 
snmmum bonum, the known and ordinary goods of the 
mind and body. And if it is in the power of our appre- 
hensions to receive ideas of greater and more delectable 
objects, or at least more genuine, expressive, and fair ideas 
of them, than any of these familiar ones which we meet 
with in this life, it will follow that our judgment, and will, 
and those benefits and advantages which flow from a right 
use of them, are proportionably improvable, seeing all the 
wrong motions and errors of the judgment and will are 
occasioned by our apprehending either imperfectly or 
falsely, what we seem to apprehend entirely and really ; and 
were our simple conceptions clear and adequate, the prin- 
ciple of self-love and self-preservation would necessitate 
us not to confound or misuuderstand their mutual relations 
designedly, and if this never happened, the elective faculty, 
under the influence of the same principle, could not but 
pursue and choose as it ought, and consequently with good 
success. 

That the apprehensive faculty is capable of receiving 
and entertaining clearer and more perfect ideas, and of 
more perfect objects than those of this life, every man, 
as he is conscious of his own nature, cannot but know ; 
for that by observation and application we daily multiply, 
rectify, and improve our ideas of such objects as occur,, 
and yet we find ourselves as capable of enlarging and im- 



APPENDIX. 317 

proving our stock at the end of life as at the beginning ; 
and the happier we have been in our acquisitions of this 
kind, and the more time we have spent in hen ping up no- 
tices and conceptions, the more sensible we are as well of 
the paucity of them, as the obscurity and the inadequacy, 
and of the sufficiency of our apprehensive faculty to admit 
a great many more, and those, as well as others collected 
and received, abundantly more clear and perfect. Indeed 
there are no ideas (except the abstracted) so entire and 
consummate, however genuine according to the measure 
and proportion of their significance, but what might be 
more full, conspicuous, and entire, than as they are exhi- 
bited. Thus for instance, our idea of light, though ge- 
nuine and true as we conceive it that which affects our: 
organs of seeing after such a peculiar manner, yet is de- 
fective and general, and takes not in a distinct and adequate 
notion of the matter, modifications, and affections, out of 
which light results. And we are convinced that our ap- 
prehension is capable of much clearer and more perfect 
ideas of that matter and those modifications and affections, 
if clearer and more perfect ideas were offered. 

And as it is not for want of sufficiency in our faculties 
that we have no clearer and more expressive ideas and im- 
pressions of objects in general, so in particular of those 
objects, from the contemplation of which our most na- 
tural happiness and sovereign satisfaction arises ; for as it 
is the effect of ideas and impressions commuuicated from 
without, that we f el any symptoms or degrees either of 
pleasure or pam, so the more ample and perfect those ideas 
and impression^ are which affect wnn pleasure or pain, the 
greater and more exquisite must be the pleasure or pain. 
Of amiable and beatific objects the most excellent is that 
eternal Being which is infinitely good and perfect, infi- 
nitely, powerful, wise, gracious, jast, and holy ; for if no 
ideas but of good and rxceilent objects can possibly affect 
us with comtort and delight then the better, and clearer 
idea we have of the best and most excellent of all objects, 
the more a great deal we mustperceiv ourselves delighted 
and blessed. And therefore as this BEING, infinitely wise, 
benevolent and faithful, has created man with intuitive and 
apprehensive faculties, of force, though by no means to 
comprehend an adequate idea of his perfections, for then 
his perfections were net infinite, yet to receive and enter- 



318 APPENDIX. 

tain a fuller and a more distinct conception of his glorious 
attributes than that which he vouchsafes us in this life ; 
so will he, being infinitely wise, benevolent and faithful, 
and therefore never erring, never acting in vain or falla- 
ciously, fill up the measure and satisfy die capacity of 
those faculties ; that is, he will most graciously vouchsafe 
us a fuller and a more distinct conception of his glorious 
attributes in another life. 

Nor can it be disputed whether our intuitive and appre- 
hensive faculties are in themselves capable of entertaining 
a more full and distinct idea of the divine attributes, than 
what is afforded in this life, because, notwithstanding those 
attributes are infinite, and consequently incomprehensible, 
yet we are conscious to ourselves, that were it not for the 
distance of the object, we are capable of apprehe?iding 
yet more of that excellency (and that' more clearly and 
distinctly) which is infinite and incomprehensible. When 
I say distance, let me not be mistaken, as if I meant that 
word to the derogation of God's ubiquity and omnipresence 
(God forbid I should)/br he is not jar from every one of 
us, and in him we live, move, and have our being; but 
that which I would signify by it, is the remoteness of his 
essential glories and excellencies from our apprehensive 
faculty in this life, in respect of that clearer idea which 
zee are capacitated to have of them in another. We know 
that we can receive and entertain ideas or conceptions of 
the excellencies of a transcendent Being more distinct and 
lively than those we have already, if they might be com- 
municated ; though we cannot comprehend adequate ideas 
of them, for that we cannot of ihose finite beings whose 
natures are more immediately perceived by us, and more 
intimately known to us. And although there is no gra- 
dation in the essential .perfections of God's attributes, 
yet since our faculties are finite, there may, and must be 
in our manner of apprehending them. Thus in the first 
place we acknowledge it most certain that a Being infi- 
nitely perfect and excellent exists, and then, to make out 
as much of the idea of his perfections and excellencies as 
we can, we gather into One all the ideas of perfection and 
excellence which in this life we can collect ; and as we 
find our apprehensive faculty capable of receiving and en- 
tertaining more distinct and full ideas of perfection and ex- 
cellence than all these, we are sure, as I said before, that 



APPENDIX. 319 

God will in another state fill up and satisfy that capacity 
(lest the end of its existing should in any measure be vaca- 
ted) with those more distinct and full ideas of perfection 
and excellence, which will constitute a more distinct and 
perfect idea of the divine attributes. 

Forasmuch therefore as the ideas and impressions of 
good and excellent objects, so far as they are good and 
excellent, are the efficient cause of all our happiness ; and 
as the end of our having a capacity to entertain such ideas 
is, that we should entertain them ; and seeing that we can- 
not entertain them till they are communicated ; and since 
we are capable of receiving and entertaining a more dis- 
tiuct and perfect idea of the most excellent, and conse- 
quently the most beatific object, than that which is in this 
life communicated ; it is as certain as that an infinitely 
wise and benevolent BEING acts not in vain or fallaci- 
ously, that that more perfect and distinct idea of himself 
will be vouchsafed to us hereafter in another life, if on our 
parts we make that use of our faculties and powers which 
he requires and expects we should ; for since along with 
our very beings he has given us a law and rule of practice 
adapted to the strength and dignity of our nature, if we 
obstinately refuse performance, we violate very fair con- 
ditions, and have reason to look for a treatment directly 
opposite to that which our obedience would have been 
rewarded with ; for if we abuse the mercies and provoke 
the justice of the Almighty, we are as capable and as 
worthy of more terrible and vindictive ideas and per- 
ceptions in another state than any known to us in this, as 
we are of more glorious, rich, and satisfactory ideas than 
those of this life, if we submit and conform ourselves to 
his good pleasure and commands. 

Now then at last we have carried up their own argu- 
ment to what the philosophers of old could neither agree 
about nor find, the true and proper summum bonum of 
man , the end of our faith, even the salvation of our souls, 
the beatific vision itself ; for now ice know but in part, 
but when that which is perfect is come, than that which 
is in part shall be done azcay, for now we see through a 
glass darkly, but then face to face; now we know in part, 
but then shall we know even as also we are known, and 
being equal unto the angels shall in Heaven always be- 
hold the face of our Father which is in Heaven. To 



220 APPENDIX. 

What clearer accounts and fuller discoveries we shall be 
admitted of the natures of created beings, whether supe-^ 
rior or inferior to ourselves, is as little material as certain j 
for although we are also capable ot much more distinct 
and comprehensive ideas of these, yet they cannot be, a* 
those future ideas of the divine attributes, Jirtaliy, simply. 
and supremely good, but barely in dependence upon, and 
consideration of the ideas of the divine attributes, our 
knowledge of the creatures being only directive and intro- 
ductory to the knowledge of the Creator, the most glorious 
and beatific object of contemplation, and therefore most 
evidently the summum bonum, to the contemplating of 
which, the capacity of our faculties is principally de- 
signed. 

And be it observed that the proof now advanced of a 
future state, wherein the full measure of our summum bo- 
num shall be filled up, which in this life we cannot have 
complete and commensurate to our faculties, is a reason- 
ing that holds equally just, whether the soul be an imma- 
terial or material substance, because though it were the 
last (which, I have elsewhere in famil. letters shewn it is 
not) the capacity of its apprehension will be nevertheless 
as large as, by die consciousness and experience which we 
have of it, we find and know it to be. 

What now can more surprise a man than that the phi- 
losophers of old, after all their tedious inquiries and close 
disputes should miss of the true summum bonum by stop- 
ping short of so plain a consequence as this ? That they 
should employ their whole lives in searches after the final 
good of human nature, and at last take up with a partial 
and imperfect one, (as did the peripatetics themselves, 
though theirs was the most extensive of them all) for want 
of examining a little whether the completion of it is re- 
served for another state \ Especially considering the proof 
1 have offered, obviously and directly proceeds upon that 
very first principle, which all the schools (not Epicurus's 
excepted) presupposed as postulatum, that the summum 
bonum of man and of every thing else ought to be com- 
mensurate to the capacity of their respective natures; and 
Piso himself has already confessed that the largest com- 
bination of virtues and the goods both of body and fortune 
cannot be so. Neither is it possible to account for the 
strange blindness of all those wise and penetrating persons. 



APPENDIX. 321 

through so long a succession of generations, in this as well 
as other instances, but by confessing that God in an extra- 
ordinary and miraculous way darkened and bridled their 
apprehensions, having ordained that the Messiah should 
first convince the Gen'iles of the certainty, of another life, 
and enforce an universal submission to that more austere, 
and spiritual scheme of morality, which he was to intro- 
duce and establish, by bringing that life and immortality 
to light through the Oospel, which the profoundest doctors 
of the heathen world only talked of in conjectures and 
dreams, though a demonstrative proof of it from the na- 
ture and constitution of things lay just before them. 

Let us all therefore, as many as profess the faith of 
Christ, and have been by his Gospel confirmed in the be- 
lief and hope of the consummation of our summum bonam 
in a future state, bless and magnify the name of God, who 
by a peculiar favour and mercy has reserved us for the 
times of the evangelical dispensation ; let us not only ex- 
press our thankfulness with our lips, but our gratitude in 
our actions and behaviour, especial!} those children of God 
and heirs of eternal life, whom he has been pleased to 
appoint unto sufferings in this world for the testimony of 
his truth and the observation of his laws. - O what a ra- 
vishing prospect ! and how sure an expectation are they 
fixed upon of approaching glory and blessedness ! The 
cruelties and furies of oppressors and tyrants can neither 
terrify nor shock them ; the impiety and cowardice of 
apostates and hypocrites never discourage nor surprise 
them ; no scandalous, atheistical renunciations of moral 
duties for the sake of religion, though never so general 
and popular, can confound their understandings or infect 
their consciences : no little foolish vanities, uot all those 
kingdoms nor the glory of them which the tempter shewed 
our blessed Saviour in a moment of time, can prevail with 
him to fall down and worship the Devil in their principles 
and practice. They knozv that they have in Heaven a 
better and more enduring substance, and that their light 
afflictions zohich are but for a moment, work for them a 
far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. And 
therefore they cannot help being easy and cheerful in the 
midst of those circumstances which had utterly dejected a 
Zeno or a Chrysippus ; when the chastizing hand is over 
them, they joyfully receive that severity which comes as 

2 T 



322 APFEXDIX. 

the earnest of an hundred-fold and everlasting life. In 
the bull of Phalaris they would celebrate the loving-kind- 
ness of their heavenly Father, encouraged by his immut- 
able promises, and supported by his holy Spirit. No won- 
der then if indeed they are found to take pleasure in infir- 
mities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in 
distresses for Christ's sake. These are not so much as 
the stoical rejicienda, what one would rather refuse than 
wish to have, in proportion to those innumerable, super- 
lative, eternal pleasures and advantages which will infi- 
nitely more than compensate for (hem in another state, 
zchere thieves cannot break through and steal. In vain 
therefore do those principalities and powers, whether of 
the air or of the earth, against which the good soldier of Je- 
sus Christ maintains a spiritual warfare, pretend to com- 
pel, affright or inveigle them ; for they are persuaded that 
neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor 
pozvers, nor things present, nor things to come, 7ior height, 
or depth, or any other creature shall be able to separate 
them from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our 
Lord. 

To whom be glory for ever and ever* 



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